After the Civil War, the United States indicted but never prosecuted Gen. Robert E. Lee for treason.

In The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee, John Reeves contends that the post war misplacement of the actual document indicting Lee serves as a proper metaphor for the loss of Americans' collective memory of hard truths surrounding the War.

Historic Matters suggests that Reeves is a party to a gradual, profound, and salutary evolution in the interpretation of a central, defining event of the American past.