This Juneteenth episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast features host Ryan Holiday and guest General Ty Seidule, retired Army brigadier general, West Point history professor, and author of Robert E. Lee and Me A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause and A Promise Delivered 10 American Heroes and the Battle to Rename Our Nation's Military Bases.

The episode opens with a Daily Stoic reflection on Juneteenth, drawing on Marcus Aurelius's Meditations to contrast beautiful Stoic ideals about equality and liberty against the historical failure to act on them — in both ancient Rome and antebellum America. Ryan then introduces his conversation with General Seidule, framing it around Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed and its distinction between memory and nostalgia.

Ryan and General Seidule discuss the renaming of Confederate military bases and public monuments, the heroes uncovered in that process — including Robert Smalls and Mary Walker — and what it means to love a country enough to tell the truth about it. The conversation covers the 2,000-year history of tearing down statues, the pernicious intent behind courthouse Confederate monuments, and why American history contains an unlimited supply of heroes worth honoring.

Stoic Ideals vs. Historical Reality on Juneteenth

Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations of 'a society of equal laws governed by equality of statute and speech, and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else' — language Ryan calls as beautiful as anything Jefferson wrote, yet equally disconnected from lived reality.

Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 drew the same distinction: 'In name, we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865.'

Meditations also contains Marcus's self-indictment: 'you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also' — Ryan notes this damns Marcus given his failure to act against slavery in Rome.

The Latin principle acta non verba — deeds, not words — is presented as the Stoic standard against which both ancient and American history must be judged.

Memory vs. Nostalgia: The Core Framework for Civil War History

Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed is recommended as essential Juneteenth reading; Smith travels to Galveston to explore what the emancipation announcement means and introduces a key distinction between memory and nostalgia.

General Seidule's Robert E. Lee and Me shares this same thematic concern — how we remember the Civil War versus how we romanticize it — and is described by Ryan as 'beautiful and moving.'

A Promise Delivered extends this framework by profiling 10 American heroes whose stories emerged from the campaign to rename Confederate military bases, arguing American history is full of people who expanded the country's promise rather than tried to destroy it.

'As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of Civil War memory in America.' - General Seidule

Robert Smalls and Mary Walker: Heroes Hidden in Plain Sight

The USS Chancellorsville — a guided missile cruiser displaying portraits of Lee and Jackson — was renamed USS Robert Smalls by Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro.

Robert Smalls was an enslaved man who stole a Confederate ship, delivered it to U.S. Navy lines, eventually commanded the vessel as a Navy captain, and later served 5 terms as a South Carolina congressman.

Mary Walker was the only surgeon employed by the U.S. Army during the Civil War, the second woman to graduate from medical school at Syracuse, and the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor — which was revoked near the end of her life and restored posthumously.

She was captured behind enemy lines during the Tennessee campaign while serving as a contract surgeon — and conducting 'a little light spying on the side.'

She was famously arrested multiple times after the war for wearing pants, which she refused to stop doing.

'We have plenty of people that we could and should honor. It doesn't mean we can't do both of these. I'm comfortable saying slavery bad.' - General Seidule

Statues, Monuments, and the 2,000-Year History of Tearing Them Down

Ryan reads from the Historia Augusta on the Emperor Commodus: 'I give it as my opinion that his statues should be overthrown... wherever they are, they should be cast down' — demonstrating that removing monuments is a 2,000-year-old practice, not a modern invention.

Other historical precedents cited: George III's Manhattan statue melted into bullets in 1776; Fort Arnold at West Point renamed Fort Clinton after Benedict Arnold's treason; National Airport renamed JFK.

General Seidule draws a sharp distinction between museums (investigation, study, recording) and public monuments (commemoration, inspiration, values): 'A museum is not commemoration.'

Hungary's post-communist solution is cited approvingly: all statues of Lenin, Marx, Engels, and Stalin were moved to a single park outside Budapest rather than destroyed.

Confederate monuments outside courthouses are identified as particularly pernicious — placed during and after Reconstruction specifically to signal the return of white political dominance and intimidate Black citizens entering civic spaces.

Stonewall Jackson High School: A Live Case Study in Monument Politics

General Seidule served as an expert witness in the case of Stonewall Jackson High School in Shenandoah, Virginia — named in 1959 as a direct reaction to school integration.

The school was renamed Mountain View in 2020, then reverted to Stonewall Jackson in 2024 — illustrating that the politics of Civil War memory remain actively contested.

'Confederates tried to destroy this country we love to create a slave republic. And it's a bad, bad thing.' - General Seidule