Book Review: Un-Cancel Robert E. Lee

Book Review: Un-Cancel Robert E. Lee
Alumnus Gib Kerr pens a forceful defense of Lee while failing to bridge the generational divide.

(The cover of Un-Cancel Robert E. Lee | SOURCE: Amazon)

The latest in a rich line of biographies about W&L’s controversial namesake — Gib Kerr’s Un-Cancel Robert E. Lee: An Open Letter to the Trustees of Washington and Lee University — is a must-read. 

Kerr, a 1985 alumnus of the university, begins his book by jumping right into one of the most contentious moments in recent years at W&L, the removal of several plaques relating to Robert E. Lee and his beloved horse, Traveller.

He argues that “modern cancel culture” now sees Lee (and even his horse) “as a traitor, a racist defender of slavery, and a symbol of white supremacy.” 

And Un-Cancel is at its best when it succinctly challenges each of these assumptions with documentary evidence.

For each argument, Kerr provides compelling quotes from Lee’s own writings and personal views. He supplements these with firsthand accounts and provides a swift, yet cogent, biography of the general that spans his youth through his postwar presidency. 

But Kerr too often excerpts these accounts from the antiquated and somewhat fallible writings of famed historians Douglas Southall Freeman and Charles Flood. Critiques and virtues of those seminal works aside, Kerr’s arguments would gain credibility had he better utilized W&L’s institutional archives and recent biographies like Professor Allen Guelzo’s Robert E. Lee: A Life, published in 2022.

Un-Cancel also challenges modern critics like historian Ty Seidule, ‘84, W&L professor Toni Locy, and journalist Adam Serwer. Kerr is careful to scrutinize their methodology rather than just their conclusions, which were written amid a national wave of removing Confederate memorials.

While Kerr argues that award-winning historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor presents an “unflattering” view of Lee, he commends her for “[laying] out the recorded evidence, including correspondence from Lee in his own words.”

Kerr refuses to extend the same credit to Ty Seidule’s memoir, stating that his fellow alumnus “refuses to cut Lee any slack,” blaming the general “for the bad things that happened in Dixie long after Lee himself had exited the stage.” 

Kerr then cautions the reader that historians must view Lee “in the totality of his life” and “take into consideration the context of the times and the prevailing views … of Lee’s contemporaries.”

But for all his familiarity with scholarship on Lee, Kerr’s depiction of American historiography misses the mark. What could have been a measured critique of the rise of historical revisionism in publications like The 1619 Project, instead became an out-of-touch, vitriolic rant against “the ivory-tower-dwelling Jacobins” of academia.

He declares that “cancel culture” is the norm “on modern college campuses” such as W&L, “[where] Marxists attack and erase history with malice aforethought.”

Perhaps this is the case on some campuses, but it in no way describes the History Department at Washington and Lee. I can testify from personal experience that most W&L history professors critique Marxist theory for its narrow, deterministic read of the past. If there are any Marxists in the department, they don’t show their support for it in the classroom.

Kerr is nevertheless correct in his underlying assertion that most professors do not like Lee. But his attribution of this phenomenon to Marxism only serves to further drag the historic figure into modern American culture wars.

For the most part, Un-Cancel Robert E. Lee entertains a wide audience of W&L trustees, alumni, and students. Kerr effectively condenses Lee’s life and recent pushback against his legacy into an eye-popping, succinct defense: a book that could (and should) be read by each member of the administration and assigned during freshman orientation or in any number of W&L courses.

But much of the book is unlikely to resonate with students today. Kerr simply spends too much time appealing to alumni readers, interrupting his historical narrative with indictments of modern American culture.

In defending Lee, for example, Kerr occasionally runs the gamut of conservative grievances, criticizing subjects from the Lincoln administration to LGBTQ+ Pride Month.

He also posits that “the Honor Code stands on increasingly shaky ground” because of the moral decay caused by things like violent video games, rap music, and “a growing cadre of international students” who lack exposure to “Judeo-Christian teachings.” These topics are neither here nor there, and simply accentuate a generational divide between W&L alumni and current students.

In many ways, this book could not exist without that divide. Lee would not be “canceled” if everyone saw him the same way, and there is a reason why these controversies have picked up in recent years, as younger professors and students arrive on campus. 

More than anything, Kerr’s book is a commentary on the 2020s. It is a reaction from an alumnus who cherishes Washington and Lee University and wants current students to have as remarkable an experience as he did. 

You might not agree with everything he has to say, and you still might not like Robert E. Lee. But you will certainly glean from Un-Cancel both a fair bit of history and the prevalent perspective that energizes the W&L alumni community and binds them to the university they so love.

Copies of Un-Cancel Robert E. Lee can be found in the University Store, at The Historian’s Books, or on Amazon. He is also hosting a book signing from 4-6:30 PM on October 5 at Sweet Treats Bakery in Lexington.