Dunce For The Confederacy: The Lost Cause of Shelby Foote
By OTOOLEFAN
“Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.”
—–Clarence Darrow
This statement has long been a favorite quote of mine, especially since it’s attributed to one of my favorite Americans (a triumvirate that includes Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln). But while I heartily agree with this sentiment in general, there’s one sinister exception in particular unrivaled in American history—namely, the Confederate cause during the Civil War. The Confederacy’s effort to establish a separate nation in order to preserve, protect and defend slavery is the most shameful hour in our nation’s life—an effort that must not be forgotten, but also one that should never be celebrated. If ever a cause deserved to be lost and stay lost, it’s this one. It was a cause, Ulysses S. Grant said, that “was, I believe, one of the worst for which people ever fought…”
But don’t tell Shelby Foote that. According to him, “The “Confederates fought for some substantially good things.” Yes, some good things, folks, except of course for that whole pesky preserving slavery thing. But hey, no system is perfect, Yank!
Shelby Foote (1916 – 2005) was a talented American writer from the South in the tradition of William Faulkner who started out writing novels and then spent 20 years of his life from 1958 to 1974 writing a massive, three volume narrative history of The Civil War. But Shelby Foote is probably best known for his participation and 89 cameo appearances in Ken Burns’ landmark PBS Civil War documentary, which aired in 1990. The series turned Foote into a reluctant celebrity, but it also made him a millionaire with his Civil War trilogy reaching a whole new audience.
Although I love American history, I must confess that I didn’t see Burns’ celebrated documentary until about 2 years ago. Like so many viewers, I was initially charmed by Mr. Foote. With his Mississippi delta drawl and air, he looked and sounded like the perfect Southern gentleman right out of central casting–or a bourbon ad. I enjoyed the series very much. But a day or two after finishing it, I found myself thinking about a lot of what Shelby Foote had said during those 9 episodes and something didn’t sit well with me. More about that later…
Watching Ken Burns’ documentary got me interested in checking out Shelby Foote’s celebrated three volume history of the conflict entitled simply: The Civil War: A Narrative. As a history buff since 8th grade, I’d read my share of Civil War books already and knew what had caused the war, so a narrative approach of the events appealed to me. I was genuinely looking forward to reading Volume 1 when I brought the dog-eared 800 page paperback home with me from our local library. So, that was my mindset when I opened this book.
I couldn’t get past the first 50 pages, folks.
For me, the trouble started almost right away where it seemed that Foote spent the first twenty pages doing back flips trying to make a hero out of Jefferson Davis. I suppose when your opponent is Abraham Lincoln, you do whatever you can to prop your guy up. Here’s an example: Foote relates how Jefferson Davis was selected by Franklin Pierce (routinely ranked by real historians as our 3rd worst President) to be Secretary of War. At least we were more honest about the job title back then. Anyway, Foote then goes on to say, “Whatever his reasons, Pierce chose well. Davis made perhaps the best War Secretary the country ever had…”
Huh?
This declaration is made all the more absurd by the fact that there wasn’t a war going on while Davis held the office and was being all fabulous. This is kind of like saying Jefferson Davis was the best fireman the country ever had, although he never went to a fire.
Of course Davis would have a very real war on his hands less than 10 years later with less than stellar results. Still, I guess Foote could also say Jefferson Davis made perhaps the best President the Confederacy ever had.
Yet another example occurs in the same opening chapter where, within the confines of a single paragraph, Foote manages to compare Jefferson Davis to both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Davis has just become President and is assuming his duties in Montgomery, Alabama, the first capital of the Confederacy. Foote writes,
“Rising early, he worked at home until breakfast, then went to his office, where he often stayed past midnight. He had need for all this labor, founding like Washington a new government, a new nation, except that whereas the earlier patriot had worked in a time of peace, with his war for independence safely won, Davis worked in a flurry against time, with possibly a harder war ahead. Like Washington, too, he lived without ostentation or pomp. His office was upstairs in the ugly red brick State House on a downtown corner, ‘The President’ handwritten across a sheet of foolscap pasted to the door. He made himself accessible to all callers, and even at his busiest he was gracious, much as Jefferson had been.”
What a guy!
To me, it wouldn’t be any sillier if Foote had written this paragraph instead:
“Their servile instincts rendered them contented with their lot.” Jefferson Davis, on slavery, post civil war.
“Similar to Washington and other earlier patriots, Jefferson Davis walked upright and breathed oxygen. Like Washington, too, Davis required sleep every night, with possibly a harder time getting any. Davis also found that he farted on occasion, much the same as Jefferson had done.”
Oddly enough, even in a literary sense, I found this book hard to read. Foote’s style struck me as very off-putting. I guess I was expecting a little more eloquence; instead I got anaconda sized sentences that contained more twists and turns than Lombard Street in San Francisco.
But it was just two scant paragraphs later, on page 42 of my library copy, that I ran up against the sentences that made me close Foote’s book in disgust forever. As he talks about the Confederate Constitution and how similar it is to our original Constitution, Shelby Foote actually writes these words:
“One important oversight was corrected, however. Where the founding fathers, living in a less pious age of reason, had omitted any reference to the Deity, the modern preamble invoked ‘the favor and guidance of Almighty God.’”
Huh?
Oh, goodie, the Confederates injected ‘Almighty God’ into their sacred Constitution—the same holy document that enshrined slavery and made it permanent. The Confederate Constitution says expressly that slavery can NEVER be abolished. NEVER. This vile document also decrees that any newly acquired territory is automatically slave territory. Yes, Mr. Foote, your beloved Confederacy certainly righted a wrong there, correcting those backward age of reason heathens. I bet George Washington and his bunch didn’t wear flag pins, either. I’m sure the Deity was pleased to be invoked in the founding document of a budding slave republic.
In the paragraph before this, Foote does mention that the Confederate constitution protected slavery in the states and any acquired territories on a FEDERAL level, but he fails to note the utter hypocrisy of this, especially since the South was supposed to be all about states’ rights. Now this is what I would call an important oversight. As actual historian William C. Davis pointed out: “To the old Union they had said that the Federal power had no authority to interfere with slavery issues in a state. To their new nation they would declare that the state had no power to interfere with a federal protection of slavery.”
Clearly we see just how little the Confederacy cared about states’ rights compared to how much they cared about protecting slavery.
I got your states rights right here, Shelby.
If I had even one iota of guilt about judging this book too quickly after reading less than 50 pages of it, that guilt was erased when I flipped to the very back and found this last sentence in Foote’s “Bibliographical Note”:
“If pride in the resistance my forebears made against the odds has leaned me to any degree in their direction, I hope it will be seen to amount to no more, in the end, than the average American’s normal sympathy for the underdog in a fight.”
Huh?
Call me kooky, but I think the real underdogs in this fight were African Americans. I’d also like to think that the average American would have little sympathy for the side fighting to keep 4 MILLION souls in permanent bondage. But hey, maybe that’s just me. I guess I’ve always marched to the beat of a different drummer.
All of this brings me back to Ken Burns’ landmark Civil War documentary. Less than twenty minutes into the first episode entitled ‘The Cause’, Shelby Foote tells us that the Civil War happened “because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise.”
And just what was it that we failed to compromise on? Gee, I wonder. What could it be? Could it be the thing we’d been compromising on ever since the writing of the Declaration of Independence? The answer is slavery, of course, but Shelby Foote never tells us that. Just like when he uses the term “Southerners” he fails to mention that he’s talking about WHITE Southerners.
“Black contribution to the war has been overemphasized.” Shelby Foote, in an interview after the Ken Burns documentary.
And just what form would any further compromise take? Would the slaves get weekends off? A half day for Jefferson Davis’ birthday? I’m pretty sure any new “compromise” would’ve still kept 4 million people enslaved. What an effing joke, Mr. Foote.
Slavery was the one issue that, in the end, could no longer be compromised on. That’s why it was the root cause of The Civil War. Abraham Lincoln knew this 3 years before civil war began, yet Shelby Foote still couldn’t seem to comprehend this over 100 years later. As Lincoln said in his ‘A House Divided’ speech in 1858: “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slaves and half free… It will become all one thing or all the other.”
Slavery was the lightning to the Civil War’s thunder. Without it there would have been no war, period. The same cannot be said of any other single issue or combination of issues that also caused sectional strife between the North and the South. Did John Brown try to lead a tax revolt? The Confederacy proved Lincoln right when they tried to become all one thing. Secession was the South’s final solution.
A mere twenty minutes into episode 2 Shelby Foote pops up again to tell us a little story. Foote relates that early on in the war a Union squad closed in on a “single ragged Confederate who obviously didn’t own any slaves and couldn’t have much interest in the Constitution or anything…” The Union soldiers ask Johnny Reb “What are you fighting for, anyway?” To which the rebel soldier replies, ‘’I’m fighting because you’re down here.’’ “Pretty satisfactory answer” says Foote with a gleam in his eye, like this was some sort of Confederate drop the mic moment.
Um, no, Shelby Foote, that is actually not a very satisfactory answer. It’s just another example of phony victimhood. I’m sorry, but you can’t start a war and then claim you’re being invaded. This logic reminds me of a story Lincoln told about a boy who killed his parents and then pled for mercy on the grounds he was an orphan. It makes it sound as if the South was just minding Her own business and these vile Yankees swooped down and attacked. Forget that the South defied a Constitutional election and then seceded from the Union; forget that the South didn’t even put Lincoln on the ballot in ten states; forget that the South started the war by firing on Ft. Sumter and the American flag–a Federal fort paid for and maintained by ALL the states, not just South Carolina, by the way. This was just Shelby Foote’s coded way of calling the Civil War ‘The War of Northern Aggression.’ The War of Northern Aggression… Now there’s a phrase that surely made George Orwell jealous.
As I stated in the beginning, Shelby Foote said that “The Confederates fought for some substantially good things.” In the year 2000 came the first debates on South Carolina’s display of the Confederate battle flag over their courthouse. The flag was put up in 1961 to commemorate the centennial of The Civil War. Originally there was a plan to take it down after 1961 concluded, but this proviso never made it into the final bill and the rebel battle flag flew all during the Civil Rights movement until 2000 when it was removed. But a compromise was struck and they flew a smaller one over by the Confederate monuments until July of 2015.
PBS News Hour aired a program in 2000 on this controversy and who do you think appeared as a guest on this show? Why, Shelby Foote, of course! One of the things Foote said during the program was this: “The Confederacy stood for a great many things other than slavery… It was other things, many other things.”
Wow, okay. Let’s see if we can find some things other than slavery the Confederacy stood for, shall we? I’d think a great place to start would be to look at some of the Southern states’ declarations of secession. Let’s begin with Shelby Foote’s own home state of Mississippi:
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion
Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.
Sheesh, not really seeing too many good things there, Mr. Foote. If you want to read the entire declaration, do so. But every sentence in it is about slavery and nothing but slavery.
But you’ve got to love the part at the end where Mississippi says they have more of a cause to leave the United States than the Colonies did to break away from England. Well, they might be right, since that revolution was over taxation not SLAVERY.
Hey, let’s check out Texas’ Secession declaration… Maybe we’ll find some of those good things the Confederacy stood for in that document.
DECLARATION OF CAUSES: February 2, 1861
A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union.
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery–the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits–a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color–a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
Nope, not seeing any good things in that document, either, Mr. Foote. Pretty hard to get past the passage where Texas is berating the Northern states for “proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color—a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law.”
“There is some justice to the claim that slavery was overemphasized.” Shelby Foote, referring to the Ken Burns Civil War documentary.
Slavery is God’s Will, Yanks!
Surely we’ll be able to find some of those “substantially good things” Shelby Foote says the Confederacy stood for in Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens’ “Cornerstone” speech, right? This speech was given shortly after the Confederate government was formed and just a few weeks before Lincoln tricked the Confederacy into firing on Ft. Sumter. Vice President Stephens tells us:
But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
Ooops, well, maybe here is the good part where Stephens gives us the corner stone of his new nation:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
You see, the actual people who were doing the seceding had no qualms about telling us it was to protect the institution of slavery. They weren’t worried about legacy or how awful this might look later on. Hell, a lot of them thought they were going to win the Civil War! Nobody goes to war thinking they’ll lose. It’s pretty hard to justify any public celebration of the Confederate cause if it was all about preserving slavery, which it was—as the above documents illustrate so clearly. It’s pretty hard to take pride in such a horrible cause, so the attempt has been made ever since to pretend the Civil War was caused by everything BUT slavery. Their favorite red herring is the weasel phrase ‘states rights’. Notice they never elaborate any further on those so-called states rights. This is probably because the ONLY ‘state right’ they cared about was the right of White people to own Black people.
On the eve of secession, wealthy Mississippi plantation owner Richard Thompson Archer declared it was time for the South to stand “united… in defense of the God given right to own the African.”
Yeah, it was all really about tariffs, huh?
Saying that slavery wasn’t the cause of the Civil War is like doing Hamlet without Hamlet.
One of the most exasperating things about Shelby Foote is that he was not an ignorant, overt racist. As Tony Horwitz relates in his book Confederates in the Attic: “But Foote had bucked the Southern trend and supported integration early on. He also quit his Sons of Confederate Veterans’ chapter when it chose to honor George Wallace on a visit to Memphis, and later abandoned plans to build a home on the Alabama coast because of a strong Klan presence there.”
That being said, let’s return to the 2000 PBS News Hour program. Here’s what Shelby Foote said when asked by the host what the Confederate battle flag meant to him:
SHELBY FOOTE: “The flag is a symbol my great grandfather fought under and in defense of. I am for flying it anywhere anybody wants to fly it. I do know perfectly well what pain it causes my black friends, but I think that pain is not necessary if they would read the confederate constitution and knew what the confederacy really stood for.”
His ‘black friends’??
Talk about putting your Foote in your mouth. This sounds like something Donald Trump would say. If only Mr. Foote’s ‘black friends’ would read the Confederate constitution they wouldn’t be pained by the rebel battle flag?? Were you on acid, Shelby Foote? Seriously.
Yes, if only black people would just get off their butt and read that dandy Confederate constitution! If they did, they’d see that it’s only real difference with the original was the sentence where the glorious new Southern nation declared that “no law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
THAT’S what the Confederacy really stood for, Mr. Foote. Sounds to me like YOU were the one who needed to read the damn thing. Boy, I just can’t imagine why your ‘black friends’ would have a problem with that. Some people are just so sensitive! Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure that anyone who uses the term “my black friends” doesn’t have any.
Oh, another difference between the two constitutions was that a Confederate president would serve but one 6 year term and have a line item veto. I’m sure this would be a great comfort to Shelby Foote’s black friends.
Continuing with his historical acid trip, Shelby Foote then says this about the Confederate battle flag:
“These things have got to be understood before they’re condemned. They’re condemned on the face of it because they take that flag to represent what those yahoos represent as – in their protest against civil rights things. But the people who knew what that flag really stood for should have stopped those yahoos from using it as a symbol of what they stood for. But we didn’t – and now you had this problem of the confederate flag being identified as sort of a roughneck thing, which it is not.”
Huh?
I’m sorry, but this statement borders on the psychotic, in my opinion. I think he even manages to out Orwell Orwell with this one. Shelby Foote is actually trying to say that this wretched flag once stood for something “noble” until Southern racists of the 20th century misused it and turned it into a “banner of shame and disgrace and hate.”
Take a wild guess at what all that white is supposed to symbolize. In a sublime case of poetic justice, Thompson’s flag had TOO much white in it; his design was later changed for fear that all that white would be mistaken for a flag of surrender.
But don’t just take my word for all this. Let me introduce you to William Thompson, editor of the Savannah, Georgia newspaper Daily Morning News. Thompson designed one of the Confederate battle flags that was accepted and approved by the Confederate government about halfway through the war. Here’s how Mr. Thompson summarized the Southern cause: “As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race…” Thompson also went on to say his new flag design would “be hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN’S FLAG.” By the way, Thompson put that in all caps, not me.
I hate to break it to you, Mr. Foote, but this flag has ALWAYS been a banner of shame and disgrace and hate. As a matter of fact, this symbol was never more shameful than when it originally appeared. This notion that the Confederate flag only came to symbolize white supremacy and racism during the civil rights movement is beyond ludicrous. It’s also historically false. I mean, how much more anti-civil rights can you be than fighting a war to establish a separate America where slavery was forever? As hateful as the white supremacists were during the civil rights struggle, at least they weren’t trying to keep FOUR MILLION souls and future generations in eternal bondage. If that’s not a “roughneck thing”, I don’t know what the hell is. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley also put her Foote in her mouth when she said that the racist killer of the Emanuel 9 had a “sick and twisted” view of the Confederate battle flag. Wrong, governor, the flag itself is what’s sick and twisted and has always been. It is our American swastika.
Now before anyone says I’ve gone too far by whipping out a Nazi reference, I believe such a comparison is entirely apt. I really don’t see much difference in 6 million people being exterminated because of their race and 4 million being permanently enslaved because of their race. A holocaust by any other name is still a holocaust.
HERITAGE, NOT HATE?
But by far the biggest weasel word used by Confederate flag apologists is the word “heritage”. Of course this is just another slavery dodge like “states rights”. Those who use the word “heritage” hope like hell nobody asks the logical follow up question of “And what heritage would that be?” The heritage of seceding from America in order to preserve slavery? Nazism and the Holocaust are part of Germany’s heritage—and that was only 70 years ago, not 150. Yet you don’t see Angela Merkel declaring a Nazi History Month and you don’t see a swastika flying from a government building in Berlin, do you? It’s somehow sadly appropriate that the only state flag in the Union that still has the confederate battle flag within it is Shelby Foote’s home state of Mississippi.
Finally, here’s what Shelby Foote had to say about the original removal of the battle flag atop South Carolina’s capital in 2000:
SHELBY FOOTE: I don’t object to any individual hiding from history, but I do object to their hiding history from me. And that’s what seems to me to be going on here. There are a lot of terrible things that happened in American history, but we don’t wipe ’em out of the history books; we don’t destroy their symbols; we don’t forget they ever happened; we don’t resent anybody bringing it up. The confederate flag has been placed in that position that’s unique with an American symbol. I’ve never known one to be so despised.
Huh?
How the hell was removing the Confederate flag from a state capital building hiding history from you, Mr. Foote? How is that wiping ‘em from the history books? Although no swastikas fly atop German government buildings, I’m pretty sure we all still know who the Nazis were, jackass.
Shelby Foote died in 2005, at the age of 88. In their obituary of him, The Guardian noted this about his three volume set Civil War: A Narrative:
There has, perhaps, never been a history, even a popular history, so devoid of ideas, or economic forces. Few historians today share Foote’s blindness toward the considerable role of blacks in the war. He scorns northern extremists, blames the abolitionists for provoking the war, and has a fondness for the murderous cavalry exploits of Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose granddaughter he met as a boy, and who permitted him to swing Forrest’s sabre above his head. He did not mention that the notoriously racist Confederate general became one of the founding fathers of the Ku Klux Klan.
Shortly after Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary ended, Shelby Foote said in an interview that “Black contribution to the war has been overemphasized.”
Yeah, like HE would know.
But I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on Foote for turning a blind eye to this. After all, it’s pretty hard to notice Black contribution to the war when you’re busy swinging Nathan Bedford Forrest’s sword about your head.
If anything has been overemphasized, it’s Shelby Foote.
Another thing I’m quite sure Mr. Foote never knew is that more men from his home state of Mississippi fought for the Union than the Confederacy. How’s that for heritage?
Shame on you, Shelby Foote. He couldn’t or wouldn’t face the truth about what the Confederacy really stood for. And shame on Ken Burns, PBS and any other serious outlet that treated Foote like he was some kind of authority on The Civil War.
It seems to me that the person who hid from history was Shelby Foote.
Tomfoolery 
As a southern descendant of those who fought on both sides, I can, for their part, verify they did not fight on either side on the slavery issue. They were poor white farmers, who did not own slaves. Their lives were hard and miserable and were looked down upon by the slave owners. Their issues were based on a divided union. As such, I am not fond of them being compared to Nazis. It is unfortunate that even in this day and age their is still prejudice of black, white, rich, poor and north and south. Seems the war did not erase everything. I found the PBS series very interesting and Mr. Shelby’ s books the same. I tend to view an author s perspective when reading anything published in order to derive my own opinions.
Just because they were poor farmers who didn’t own slaves doesn’t mean they didn’t believe in the cause of slavery. You think they were against slavery? You think they wanted black men to be free??? Slavery IS the main cause of The Civil War. The South saw Lincoln as a foe to slavery–and that’s why his election caused them to SECEDE before he even took office. Sorry if you are offended by me comparing a traitorous rebellion that tried to establish a slave Republic in America where an entire race of people would be enslaved forever to the Nazis.
And poor white Southern workers really did not want to have to compete in the labor market with freed former slaves or lose their place in the pecking order wherein they were poor but still “better” than any black slave.
Exactly.
I am not disputing your belief that slavery was the cause of the war. Nor frednotfai s belief about competition. I am stating that my family who fought on both the north and south did not do so based on the slavery issue. They re concerns were with splitting the union and felt slavery issues were not something they could end one way or the other. It is my family and I think I have more insight into it than either of you. I have letters, documents which are first hand accounts of their beliefs at the time. Please don t insinuate that I am a liar. It appears to me you have a great hatred for southerners and revere those from the north. If the north believed in such equality, why is their such racism in the north both right after the war and now? What you both fail to realize is the atmosphere of history at that time. You cannot compare it to today. I put forth to you the difference between womens rights today compared to back then. Should all men be condemned for that? And as a correction to your statement about Jews being enslaved to Nazis, you are wrong. Nazis didn t want them enslaved, they wanted them eradicated from the face of the earth.
It’s not my “belief” that slavery was the cause of the Civil War–it’s historical fact. So, i’m done wasting my time with anybody who thinks or pretends to think this is still up for debate. The South had no problems declaring they were fighting to protect and preserve slavery. It’s in their own Secession statements, for chrissakes. It was only after they lost, and they realized it would look pretty bad if their main reason for committing treason and killing American to was establish a slave nation and even EXPAND slavery. It was, as U. S. Grant noted, “one of the worst causes for which men ever fought.” And when they use the term “states rights” they always omit that the biggest “state right” they were fighting for was to be able to OWN other human beings. The Confederate Constitution protected slavery on a FEDERAL level–saying specifically that no state could ever ban it. So, there’s the states right bullshit exposed as just that, bullshit. That your family didn’t own slaves is neither here nor there as to what caused the Civil War, Glad they didn’t… Don’t get me wrong–if the North was set up for agriculture and the South industry, the North would’ve been the ones with the slaves…
The main reason why the North fought, especially in the beginning, was to PRESERVE THE UNION, not end slavery. But that nor that there’s racism in the North as well negates, not even one iota, that SLAVERY was the cause of the Civil War and why the South seceded, and that the South’s cause was, and still is, “one of the worst for which ever men ever fought.”
Not sure why this old article landed in front of me. Even though it was longwinded and vitriolic, it was also funny and thought provoking. So I read it all. I’m guessing you won’t be getting any answers, responses, clarifications, or explanations from a guy who’d been dead 10 years already. Too bad.
Thanks for taking time to read it! I know I could’ve made my point in less words 🙂
I read a grand total of 9 (count em!) 9 factual errors in this blog post.
The writer does a great disservice to history and American cultural identity by leaving it up.
Count em? What are the nine factual errors? The only writer who’s done a great disservice to history is Shelby Foote, who couldn’t or wouldn’t admit what caused the war or that his beloved Confederacy was about nothing more than preserving AND expanding slavery in their brand new slave Republic.
I learned a lot about our racist past from this, and reading the secession passages of the states provided was kind off shocking. Man, were the Southern leaders racist to the bone. I’m glad I didn’t live then, though I would have gladly picked up a Union weapon to help free the slaves.
Dear. Sir. To a southerner. Like me honor. Is everything. An what. You did. Sir. Angers my soul. To place that ole flag. Which I love. Next to a heathen Godless flag of the Nazi party is. Absurd. You Sir have insulted. My southern. Honor. Sir. .an. If. This. Was. The. Old. Days. A. Duel. Would. Be in. Place. I wish I was in. Dixie. Away. Away. …..Sincerely. William. Randolph. Eason. Of.the. Randoph. Of. Va. Family. An. Lee. Family.
Dear Sir: That “ole flag” you love is the flag of treason and racism, pure and simple. Thanks for showing your true colors and that you don’t deserve to wave our AMERICAN flag. That “ole flag” you claim to love is the flag under which Americans were killed by TRAITORS who waged a war in order to save, protect and EXPAND slavery. Oh, and by the way, the Confederate flag is very often being waved right alone with the Swastika by modern Neo-Nazis because they know what that flag really represents. Your biggest problem with the Nazi flag seems to be that it wasn’t religious lol. Not so much what was done under it.
I almost didn’t reply to your post because I thought it was so ludicrous it must be a parody. But then I realized you can’t parody the all too real ignorance and stupidity of so many Foote defenders and slavery apologists.
Well, you’re a fucking moron. Congratulations on spending this much time attacking the author of a series of books you didn’t even read.
I’ll let the stupidity of your post speak for itself. Some very eloquent, classy Foote defenders on here lol…
Do you find yourself classy Don? You have proven yourself to be vile towards anyone who disagrees with you, attacking grammatical errors like that somehow justifies your liberal talking points. You have indeed become a fool in your supposed “wisdom”, and your childish attacks on anyone who disagrees with you is rather pathetic to say the least
Its just like a liberal to write opinion based slander. Especially against one of Americas most distinguished historians who is no longer alive to defend his point of view. This article is liberal propaganda to spread hate where there is none. You should be ashamed of yourself. You cannot look at the circumstances surrounding a 19th century conflict through the scope of todays political correctness. People like you will never understand that through your narrow point of view. Open your eyes.
God, I don’t think it’s possible to write a dumber post than you just did. “Open your eyes” is one of the hallmark phrases of an ignorant wing nut. Is this Sean Hannity?
I have read Mr. Foote’s trilogy. I have always disliked the basic dishonesty of Southern war supporters about the cause of the war and was not disappointed by his take. What upset me even more than the coded embrace of slavery as righteous was the flat out bias against the Union effort to save America. For books that ran to barely under 3,000 pages he gives incredible short shrift, two sentences, to the 20th Maine’s stand on Little Round Top while making me slog through almost 10 pages on Longstreet’s bungled march to get his corps in position there. This struck me as odd until I remembered that Longstreet is the “Lost Cause” villain who failed the prophet Lee that day and Chamberlains heroism is not tangent to that whitewash. This basic dishonesty makes me pull back from my admiration of Foote’s effort.
1. “As a history buff since 8th grade, I’d read my share of Civil War books already and knew what had caused the war . . .”
And what make you think those books are valid?
2. You cite Godwin’s Law—anyone who mentions Nazi automatically loses the argument— when you try to discredit Thomas Sowell, but the you picture the Confederate Battle Flag together with the Nazi flag.
Many of my ancestors were killed by nazis for saving Jews. I think that they stood on the same side as unionists that every man should be free. Confederates were like the nazis. They believed to be a better race. They killed Jews and Poles, enslaved many and believed they were right.
Hmm, as a general matter of fact, I believe books that would ignore historical documents created by the actual subjects of the historical work itself qualify as invalid. Into that bin go every book claiming that the Civil War was not about Slavery.
Simply put, the confederates ARE America’s nazis; easily the closest analog. The writer rightly shows how their flag should be viewed.
Well said, Gene! Thank You,
I mean, reading the states succession language word for word, and the speeches of the Southern leaders, word for word, kind off gives away Foote’s poor historical accounts. In fact, it blows them out of the water. There really is no way to claim Foote has any realistic historical viewpoint that is accurate on the matter. Many do like to live in an alternate reality, however.
I couldn’t get past episode two of rewatching (today) Ken Burns Civil War because of Mr. Foote. His story of why we fight (because you’re here) led me to a search to see if others found him very disturbing. Thank you for the criticism. As a citizen of Virginia, I was ashamed to see General Lee’s statue in the Capitol as one of two allowed for each State. And military bases named for Confederate officers! Our country’s complicity in this revisionist history is shameful. An Iowa Congessman keeps a Confederate flag on his desk! I will do more to ensure our Civil War dead did not Die in Vain.
The piece would be more persuasive without all the relentless and heavy sarcasm. Sometimes understatement
I thought that was the best part, actually. How else should he do it. He’s not writing a history book.
“Franklin Pierce (routinely ranked by real historians as our 3rd worst President)…” Unless you pause to assess Pierce, this kind of generic unexplained ranking is meaningless.
I mean, you can look at the rankings of US Presidents. He’s from New Hampshire, and countless lists of US Presidents list him as the third worst president in our history. Trump may push him to #4, however. We’ll let him finish his only term, though, before ranking him.
I mean, Franklin Pierce is ranked third worst president on pretty much every list you can find. You’d probably like him. He refused the bible on his swearing in, using a law book instead. He was a dark horse candidate, and he fought for slavery loudly, fanning the flames within the country, helping the push towards civil war. He had limited success in expansionism, his sole goal outside beating the slavery drum. The Democrats refused to nominate him for the ballot and a second term, a first. He was a raging alcoholic or a dry drunk, depending on the year, and the one good thing he’s remembered for is putting up a Christmas tree in the white house. That’s it. Literally. Unless you want to really drill down on how much people hated him. Not much to write about. Only other thing I could add is that, In fact, Trump may push him to fourth on the list very soon.
“…while I heartily agree with this sentiment in general…” Why would you heartily agree in general or to any extent with the doctrine that “lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for”? The claim is absurd on its face. Do you “in general” reject causes that have triumphed, regardless of their merit? A compact and memorable aphorism is not true simply because it is compact and memorable. I hope I’m not engaged in a lost cause here…
You don’t believe in helping the most needy among us? You don’t seem to get his analogy that fighting for slavery, which was hanging on by a thread isn’t a “needy” cause worth fighting for. It’s like you are trying to psychoanalyze the writer beyond the simplistic meaning that is staring you in the face. Who rejects causes that triumphed? That has nothing to do with the meaning of the quote.
The white man will win the second American Civil War.
“The white man wi win the second American Civil War”?? Who is this? Charles Manson? Crawl back in your hole, Capt Moron.
More men from Mississippi fought for the Union…as a Proud Mississippian and a historian i can now say, wthout a shadow of doubt, that you are either just plain dumb or a bald face liar. And i boldly demand you reference that B.S. or leave what little honor you have as a man at the door on your way out. Sir.
A whopping 500 men accounted for the Mississippi defects to the Union. That is compared to 80,000 for the Confederates. That number is smaller than the needle in the haystack. Just for the record, historian, sir. I do believe, the author of the above piece, is pretty darn honest, like it or not.
You, dear sir, deserve no respect from anyone. And are exactly the problem of all that transpires today. May God have mercy upon you. Or may you burn in hell.
You deserve to return to serfdom. Southern wannabe. You all fled Europe as you were to lazy to work the fields… as a descendant of your former lords I order you to shut up and return to the field. You are a lazy southern peasant, and I do not tolerate racism amongst my serfs.
I am directly related, on both my mothers and fathers side of the family, to men who fought for the Union. One in particular who after being wounded at 2nd Manasses was mustered out and continued his law practice. After the war, as a lawyer and later judge he devoted his professional career to fighting the Klan and advocating for freedmen in the south. Some would consider him a carpetbagger; to me his legacy fills me with the deepest pride. So it’s not really a mystery as to why I hold certain opinions. I despise the Confederate flag, it was carried by a seditious army which sought to tear our republic asunder and keep millions of human beings in bondage. It was was a cause both morally and spiritually bankrupt. I personally don’t think that stupid flag even belongs in a museum, if I had my way it would be in a dumpster.These are opinions I hold onto strongly, but I must emphasize that they are my opinions and are not objective reality. I believe men and women of good faith can look at that flag and see something worthwhile and feel genuine pride. I don’t understand it, but there it is I guess. I had the opportunity to meet Shelby Foote after attending a lecture he gave at my college. We shared a fantastic conversation about the Civil War, every History geeks dream. Shelby was really a lovely man and his demeanor was that of a gentleman. His roots are in Mississippi, mine are in New England so of course our subjective opinions about the Civil War will not always square up! That doesn’t make him a bad guy, in fact I don’t think there was a mean bone in his body. So to the author of this article, I say you need to relax and get a hold on yourself. I agree with a lot of what you have to say, but when you frame your arguments like such an arrogant asshole, you do yourself an injustice. You’re not going to persuade anyone of the merit of your arguments by comparing people to Nazis or screaming racist because you don’t agree with or like someone’s opinion. As a Jew I personally find your clumsy comparison to be offensive and intellectually lazy. Maybe if you took the time to learn more about Mr. Foote you’d realize his capacity for objectivity was actually quite remarkable.
Well said.
As a Southerner, and a member of a long line of Unionists, few things are as annoying as someone complaining and whining about “States’ Rights”. South Carolina had NO problem threatening other states when it suited them – so I am dubious about the conviction of people who claim to defend the “rights” of their own state while seeking to undo the same of other states.
I would be glad to defend any question you have on the matter with absolute fact.
I just finished Burns’ Civil War on Netflix. Foote’s obvious admiration for the Confederacy bothered me so much that I had to see if anyone else had taken note. Thanks for validating my unease with his comments and the glossing over of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s post-war activities – something the movie Forrest Gump managed to cover. I’m going to deploy your Nazi flag argument from here on out. If my in-laws can’t understand that history is contained in books, written records, documentaries, photographs and testimonials rather than a flag, they should at least understand a Nazi comparison. Let’s hope.
Let’s HOPE, indeed! Thanks so much for taking the time to read it! You give ME hope 🙂
That is widely known, even among northern historans, as the most slanted, blatant piece of propaganda against the South available. Widen your references.
Have read bits over the years but only recently read the final chapter on poor misunderstood Jefferson Davis. Read the quotations from his letters and public statements in The Fall of the House of Dixie. They proclaim the good of slavery, the inferiority of the negro, a demand for the return of runaways and right to expand bondage into new territories. Davis, who was one of the South;s largest planters, speaks with the same condescension regarding his salves that contemporary 1%s do toward workers.
The book also notes that slave return and expansion bottom lines for the compromisers. Foote spoke in abstract of a genius for compromise, but in this instance the slave owning states sought not compromise but submission to their demands.
“Davis, who was one of the South;s largest planters, speaks with the same condescension regarding his salves that contemporary 1%s do toward workers.” I was following you until this ridiculous sentence.
No doubt there is a similar assault on workers today. Wealthy entitlements and corporate welfare vs. workers rights and safety nets. It’s a modernized type of slavery, though I do not compare it to the brutality and sheer evil of being considered 1/2 a person, or indentured.
To the author, again I love the piece. Recently I read an article about the confederate flag and all the confederate monuments. In that piece the journalist talked about how Eisenhower called for writers, photographers and film makers to document the concentration camps. As Ike would say “in fifty years let no one say this never happened.” It was pointed out in this opinion piece the outcry from the Jewish people of the world if suddenly they tried to demolish the concentration camps that still stand.
Most of these confederate monuments were erected by a bitter and defeated people. They said fu to the Union and gave a clear picture of how the new order was to be in the Jim Crow South. I struggle day to day, week to week with these monuments. I generally believe they should be relocated to battle fields or destroyed.
Then I think about the Jews and how they WANT these places of torture and death to stand as a reminder of their plight and strength. As a white male it has cross my mind that a person of color might want to take the Jewish approach. Relish in how they withstood everything that was thrown at them. Let the statues and flags forever proclaim their resiliency and strength. Let them go on standing as a symbol of how they overcame slavery and the days of segregation.
Interested in thoughts as I wrestle with my own-tear em down or leave them up?
I understand your sentiments about leaving the statues up as a reminder of the racist evil of the Confederacy etc. Unfortunately, however, we seem to be confronted with the sad evidence that many in the South are still fighting the Civil War and that racism is alive and well–even thriving with the current racist sociopath occupying the White House right now. So, rather than serving as a reminder of a terrible lost cause, I think these PUBLIC statues give fuel and legitimacy to our current crop of racists and Neo-Nazis. So, TAKE ‘EM ALL DOWN, I think. Doing so will not erase people’s memory or knowledge of the Civil War or the Confederacy as I don’t think we learn about our history through public monuments.
Somebody put it this way and it sums up the way I feel: “Taking down Confederate monuments in not erasing history–it’s declaring that some parts of history belong in a museum, not on a pedestal.”
Jason Parks is an ex serf of my family. His ancestors escaped to the US and lived a confortable life instead of working on my ancestors estates. He is a pot calling kettle black, and if he wants any social justice given to the South then he and many more descendamts of escapee peasants should return to Europe and work the fields…
Growing up in Memphis I actually knew ole Shelby. I truly believe he thought he had a good perspective on things and that he saw himself as a decent human being. I once had a signed copy of “the Narrative” that my grandfather procured from Mr. Foote…. he inscribed in the first volume “To Danny Walker, a fellow Memphian and historian. Shelby Foote”.
I think his work in the three volumes concerning the battles is priceless. He put you there and his illustrations although simple gave you a sense of “the lay of the land and the movement of the troops”.
I completely agree here with the author on the Jefferson Davis writings…. both at the beginning and the end of the works Foote tried to set Davis up as a figure from a Shakespearean tragedy. Nonsense!
To my fellow Southerners who suggest the war was fought over “states rights” I say bull! Leading up to the war there were many compromises made to keep the union together. They started from day one, 1788. Just follow the logic- if there were no slavery there wouldn’t have been a cotton explosion nor aristocracy. The south would have been a land of subsistence farming and extremely under-populated… in 1861 a wilderness. Towns and cities grew around railroad, river and ocean ports. These areas were the starting points for the movement of cotton up to the north or across the Atlantic. Naturally other businesses were developed and flourished but it all was dependent on king cotton.
I quite often use the NAZI comparison… could you imagine Bavaria or Saxony adding a small swastika to their state flag as a fuck you to the victors? Southerners will say “but they bought slaves and cared for them”. That’s your argument for not likening the South to NAZI Germany? I like this line- “……. a holocaust is a holocaust’.
SLAVERY WAS THE ONLY REASON THIS WAR WAS FOUGHT.
Well done!
“These are my people.”
If Mr Foote was talking about his biological family, then fine. But if by ‘my people’ he was referring to ‘the South’, then he is also talking about human cargo, human inventory, human disposables, human slaves. Those individuals should have been included in his concept of ‘my people.’ They weren’t.
I’m a little late to this post, but I was watching Ken Burns’ Civil War on Netflix for the first time and was taken aback by the narrative put forth by Mr. Foote, that I decided to search the internet to: 1. Learn more about him and 2. See if anyone else was as unnerved by him as I. Your post states everything I couldn’t quite put my finger on every time Foote graces the screen. It’s something I’m the way his eyes twinkle as he reveres the Old South and those that fought to preserve it. I started to feel as though he wasn’t even a good source. He told stories that he would have no way of knowing if he were not present at the moment these conversations occured. (See episode 3, the Robert E. Lee peach eating narrative.)
It was his description of Jefferson Davis as a man that made me stop mid-episode to research. His infatuation with Davis is evident and strange when we really take into account that Jefferson Davis’ entire presidency was established to keep a group of Americans enslaved.
There is so much I could say on the subject but I will stop here. Thank you for articulating my own thoughts so clearly and for the additional research I was to lazy to put in myself.
U
You make some compelling points, but many of your ‘facts’ are incorrect and are pretty easily disproved. For simplicity, I started with the last one about more men from Mississippi fighting for the Union than for the Confederacy. Seriously?
Even when you count the freed slaves, it’s not even close. You can read about it here…
http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/175/mississippi-soldiers-in-the-civil-war
Again, you make a few noteworthy points about Mr Foote, but I think you aren’t contextually considering a lot of the aspects of the culture at that time, mainly, the soldiers fighting the war, on both sides, didn’t give a damn about the slaves. You also fail to mention several other comments Lincoln made about African-Americans and their ‘equality.’ Mr Lincoln was no friend to the African American, and actually thought it was a good idea to colonize them.
While the Civil War was about slavery, I think there were many things at stake (a huge one being the constitutionality of succession itself). and it’s not as cut-and-dry as many of us would like to think. And neither was Mr Foote.
“While the Civil War was about slavery, I think there were many things at stake…” This is merely a truism. The issue is whether slavery (and the sectional perspectives on it) was the central cause and motivation of the Civil War. If slavery had faded out in the south as it had done in the north, there would have been no secession in response to the election of a president whose party was opposed to expansion of…slavery. There would have been no speeches by Davis and Stephens explaining that the founding of the Confederacy was necessary to protect…slavery. There would have been no Civil War.
It’s pretty cut and dry. The South succeeded, not the North. They did it to preserve slavery, not the North. Sure the North may have gone to war to preserve the Union, but this was focused on the South, no? Lol A limited number of Southern layman didn’t fight for the slave trade, but the 2 million original soldiers sure as hek did. They even brought slaves to dig barriers, wash clothes, and cook dinner while they were fighting. The northern fighters fought to preserve the Union, sure, it had nothing to do with wanting to free slaves, but the piece isn’t about the North. Not even one sentence. The Souths stance on slavery is pretty cut and dry.
Great piece! Its crazy how pervasive this whole glorification of the south has been for 150 years, even though the truth is clear as day if you go back to contemporary sources -the whole Confederate endeavour was racist to its core. The fact that the liberal establishment has embraced this myth for so long is also very damning.
Truth be told most all whites in the entire US in 1861 were as you say racists. No state wanted to deal with free black slaves.
Not really true. Some states, such as Massachusetts, were much more progressive than others, at least as far as the laws went, even if every state had racists (and that’s as true today as it was in 1861). Some northern states had laws that prohibited blacks altogether and there most southern states outlawed teaching blacks how to read & write and prohibited the publication of any publication that included articles expressing opposition to slavery, all of which are contrary to the U.S. Constitution, at least as based on the addition of the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court rulings over the last 70 years. The U.S. was hardly the unsullied land of the free in the 1800s, and we still have many problems, but at least there were and are people who have worked to make our nation more just and fair for all. Alas, there also have been and still are people who worked mighty hard to retain and expand injustice and unfair laws. Ignoring past sins is hardly the answer but neither is pretending that nothing ever changes and that is useless to even work for or even hope for positive change.
Thank you for your post Don. After watching the interview of Mr. Foote and Brian Lamb of C-Span I came away feeling sorry for Mr. Foote. After all the years it took him to put together his three volume set and the 350 books he claims to have read regarding the Civil War, Mr. Foote remained in denial of the one great fundamental truth: the Civil War was fought because of slavery.
Yet, to deny this truth or show an unwillingness to confront the evil that slavery was and always has been or to down play its significance is, in my opinion, a sin of monumental proportion. But to spend a great deal of ones life purposely, willfully and deceitfully working to cover up or dilute this fundamental truth is another matter all together.
Listen long enough and Mr. Foote’s words fall short and his vision is clouded. When Brian Lamb asked Mr. Foote if he were alive at the time of the Civil War what side he would be fighting on, Mr. Foote, without hesitating said with a gleam in his eye and a wry smile, ” I’d be fighting on the Confederate side. Right or wrong those are my people and I’d be with them.” No doubt.
And therein lies the problem. Truth and right become subjugated. And all the glorification of war; its battles, its soldiers,and its landmarks no matter how intoxicating and romantic they may have become over time cannot and will not replace the fundamental truth that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
I couldn’t have expressed it any better, Ted. Couldn’t agree more. You’ve summed it up quite perfectly with regard to Foote’s denial and even sometimes willful distortion. Yes, all he wants to talk about and describe are the battles. It all keeps coming back to what Grant said after the war about the Confederate cause being “one of the worst for which men ever fought.” Foote couldn’t or wouldn’t face the essential truth even after the years he devoted to the study of and writing a history of the Civil War. Sad, indeed.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read it and for your comments,
Great post. A lot of these commenters defending Foote on here are true pieces of work. They, along with Foote, sound exactly like the recent breed of revisionists who want to(and in Texas’ case have succeeded) whitewash and sanitize America’s role in slavery and the Civil War.
In Texas for example, the state board of education revised the state social studies standards where students now have to read Jefferson Davis’ inauguration speech as president of the Confederate States of America, where slavery is never mentioned. At the same students aren’t required to read a speech from his VP Alexander Stephens, where he mentioned the South’s desire to preserve slavery and how it was the cornerstone of their new government. The one that did it for me was when a textbook printed a chapter on immigrants, and Africans, who were brought over here in chains between the 1500’s and the 1800’s, were revised as millions of workers who were brought to the U.S. to work on agricultural plantations. No mention of lynchings. No mention of forced rapes by slave masters. Slaves (a.k.a., My Ancestors) were just happy clappy to be taken from their homeland and their culture, away from their families and ready to come to American to work, only to once again be snatched away from their families and literally AND legally treated strictly as property and not human.
And now you have morons out carrying on the tradition of telling outright lies to new generations that slaves were just perfectly happy while out singing in the cotton fields.
As for the comparison to Nazis, you’re spot on. And to some who say the Holocaust was worse than slavery, this is not some pissing contest!! BOTH were horrendous in the extreme. You can easily ask any living survivor of the Holocaust (and they are still around) or you can easily ask the surviving family members and friends of the four little girls who were murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Jim Crow’s Birmingham (or BOMBingham), Alabama by homegrown terrorists in 54 years ago this month. Again, great post, Don. Keep on speaking the truth.
Why won’t the author answer my question about more people from Mississippi fighting for the Union than the Confederacy? I don’t know how anyone can say he speaks the truth if that statement is incorrect.
I haven’t replied yet because I’ve been looking for the source of my statement about Mississippi, and it wasn’t a fly by night source. I remember at the time thinking it seemed unlikely. I have not been able to find it again, and have since seen figures that show my statement about there being more folks in Mississippi who fought for the Union to be wrong. So, I stand corrected and apologize for the error. This does not, however, invalidate any of the main points of what I wrote, let alone Foote’s fool ideas about the Confederacy standing for some “noble” things or that somehow that Confederate battle flag hasn’t always stood for racism, white supremacy & the lost cause of trying to establish a slave republic where slavery was protected, forever, on a FEDERAL level. States rights lol…
I see no good coming from your derision of people who did nothing more than express an opinion. Ironic that you should invoke Nazism while engaging in an effort to dehumanize those who see things differently from you. If you want to play that game there are lots of other comment boards that will relish your partisanship. Until now I have enjoyed reading all of this posts on this thread about Foote and his writings. I don’t agree with all the characterizations I’ve read here but some of those have caused me to look at some of Foote’s work from another perspective.
This site has largely resisted such blatant partisan politics.
Don’t ruin it.
You can’t get past the first 50 pages and you think you know what you are talking about? Please.
As I’ve explained and stated in the article, this is NOT a review of Foote’s book–it’s about the foolish and objectively false narratives he pushed about what the Confederate flag and the Confederacy stood for. He couldn’t or wouldn’t face that white supremacy & preserving slavery was what the South was fighting for. That these Confederate participation trophy public monuments have become a rallying point for neo Nazis and the KKK just highlights what I said in this piece.
Your replies have caused me to ask this question:
Do you think Foote (and for the Confederacy in general for that matter) did not believe in the principles as laid out in Foote’s narratives? If they are generally accurate, did he not do justice to his effort to be a historian?
Think of it this way, would a history of the American Revolution written by a British historian written after the war calling the Founding Fathers scoundrels and traitors, even while accurately describing the events of the war be any less useful in making possible an better understanding of the war.
Wars generally start because both sides believe strongly enough in principles to be willing to die (or at least send young men of to die) for them. Foote does an excellent job illustrating those southern sensibilities. And I do not infer from anything he wrote that he denies that white supremacists existed and that slavery is a grave evil. If he did so he would be far more than a dunce. He would be evil himself.
And again, while not intending to turn this thread into a political shooting gallery, allow me to offer what I believe to be a modern day example of the whole states rights/slavery debate which contains uncanny similarities:
Pro-Life advocates see abortion as a moral evil that treats human life as property, ignoring abortion’s legal status.
Pro-Choice advocates see abortion as the legal exercise of a constitutional right, ignoring the moral status.
As happens in most conflicts, the ultimate “winner” will define what the conflict was all about.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think Foote was a very talented writer, but was clouded by his refusal to see the inherent evil of the Confederacy and its warped cause. Objectively, I think the biggest flaw with his trilogy is that it is really only about battles and troop movements. Of course all he wants to write about are battles, gallantry, bravery–this way he doesn’t have to face what the Confederacy really stood for, nor address the root cause of the war–Slavery. The people who fought the war had no reason to disguise their motives–it’s only after the cause was lost that they tried to make it about other causes rather than the preservation AND expansion of slavery in creating a slave republic. The other big problem I had in my admitted short sample of Foote’s first volume was his unfounded and seemingly pathological need to try to put Jefferson Davis on the same political and leadership footing as Lincoln. That dog just doesn’t hunt.
By the way, I still intend to try and read all 3 volumes of Foote’s trilogy, now that I’ve said my peace about him. Foote was a novelist–a good one–but he was not a historian and was the first one to point that out.
I really do wish I could find that source for my mistaken Mississippi claim. I’m not a conspiracy theorist and it wasn’t a wacko site–maybe it was in a book. Anyway, I will continue to try to find it–not because I think I’m still right about that–but because I’m curious where it came from, why it fooled me, or maybe that I read it wrong in some manner.
Peace.
Another thing I’m quite sure Mr. Foote never knew is that more men from his home state of Mississippi fought for the Union than the Confederacy. How’s that for heritage?
Do you have any sources for this statement?
There are no accurate sources for this, as it is patently false.
I may be a little late finding your write-up, but I’m glad I did because it answered all the questions (and confirmed the suspicions) I had that motivated my Google search on this topic. This follows the recent tragic events in Charlottesville, VA, where we are given a modern-day lesson on how Confederate symbols have been appropriated as symbols of racial hate and animosity on an even larger scale than ever before and are now being displayed right alongside the swastika for good measure. Apparently (and based on some of the comments that have been posted here), some still don’t see anything wrong with public displays of symbols of human bondage and genocide.
troll article for click bait
Think we can see who the real troll is lol…
Hello,
Will be finishing up the 3rd book shortly. Appreciated your post and agree with much of your content. Before continuing, while I don’t agree with Foote, I recognize the achievement is taking on and completing such a task. Personally, my opinion is that these books are the attempt of a white Southern man hung up on defeat to demonstrate how bravely Confederate soldiers fought despite the odds. If you had continued reading, you would surely have noticed the series is about the battles and the fighting, not much else. Foote disparages Lincoln in the seldom occasions he is mentioned but laboriously describes obscure river maneuvers along Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi through dozens of pages-why? What was the contribution to the outcome of the war?
As with the first book, Foote opens his second tome with another idolization of Jefferson Davis. Davis has quite a following among amateur historians and Civil War enthusiasts (read Southern sympathizers); however, professional historians regard the disproportionate political abilities between Lincoln and Davis as a substantial difference in the war. I do want to point out the irony of the “State’s Rights” argument and the impossible task of Davis: in order to secure the sovereignty of state’s rights those states left a centralized government only to fall under another centralized government..
Foote is enamored with Forrest. Regarding the Fort Pillow Massacre, Foote is adamant that Forrest did all in his power to prevent the continued slaughter/murder after any resistance was discontinued. Basically, he admits that a few unnecessary Union deaths but nothing that could constitute a “massacre”. Historians Richard Fuchs and Andrew Ward, among others, deny this claim and insist it was whole sale slaughter. As was corroborated by Confederate soldier Achilles Clark detailing the ordeal in a letter to his sister. Foote is given free-reign considering he does not quote sources. His status as historian is amateurish while erudite. Naturally, the veracity of his conclusions is highly debatable.
Before Foote, read: McPherson, Foner, Royster, Faust and many others..There are so many great, engaging,
In all, I have enjoyed these books though I would not recommend them. They look great sitting on a book case, all three in a row, someone will undoubtedly ask “You read all three?” –Ohh yes, yes. Took some time-but I managed. “What did you think?” –Well, I keep them as a monument to the efforts men will endure to fool not only others but also themselves..
Take care. I’ve perused some of the other responses. Some have applauded your efforts, others have disagreed, one or two threatened violence. What an amazing array of responses from people you’ll never meet and who most likely never read the books-this is the legacy of the Civil War
What a great post! Thanks so much for reading and posting such an interesting, thoughtful response.
You lose all credibility when you name Forrest as a founding member of they KKK. Forest didn’t even know that such an organization existed until someone told him he had been elected as it’s first grand wizard. He also disbanded it when it’s violence became extreme. Forrest carried his slaves to war with him with the promise of freedom for faithful service. He armed them to the teeth and made them his personal bodyguard and used them to plug holes in the line and as shock troops when he felt the Yankees wavering. He could barely read or write but managed to become a Lt General by wars end. Not one of those slaves he took to war ever ran off or tried to kill him. Was he a racist by today’s standards absolutely but judging men of the 19th century by today’s morals is just plain dumb. If you had grown up in that time period you would have felt the same as they did. Forrest should be remembered as a military genuis and for his extreme bravery. He never took a Generals privilege to remain in the rear and had double digit number of horses shot out from under him. He once found himself surrounded by the enemy and was shot at point blank range. He proceeded to reach down and grab a Yankee and used him as cover as he rode to safety.
“Forest didn’t even know that such an organization existed until someone told him he had been elected as [its] first grand wizard.” Was Forest aware of the existence of the KKK after he had been elected first grand wizard? You’re quibbling here, because he was obviously a major player from very early in the organization’s history.
Shelby Foote forgot more about the War of Yankee Aggression than you will ever know. I trust his analysis. Especially considering his three part narrative is considered by many to be the premiere works regarding the topic. A college student once wrote a report about him and stated” Shelby Foote was a veteran of the civil war whose writings make the reader feel as if they were there also. Think about it, he was able to describe the war in such great detail that she thought he had to have fought in it. This narrative that the war was solely about slavery is just propaganda made by liberals who cherry pick quotes from politicians in order to prove their lies. Slavery played a role in the war. But it was only one of many causes. America lost a great man when Mr Foote died and we aren’t likely to see his like again. A pity for us.
“War of Yankee Aggression” is you need to know about the absurdity of your point of view. Oh, and “slavery played a role” is a real gem, too, lol…Slavery was the ROOT cause of the war, as the seceding states made perfectly clear in their secession statements. South didn’t leave the Union because of Lincoln’s position on tariffs. Of course there were other sectional strife factors, but nothing on the level of slavery. This is just a fact.
“Slavery played a role in the war. But it was only one of many causes.” No slavery, no war. “The election of Lincoln” as, for example, a “cause” of secession and the war is unintelligible except by reference to the fact that he was unacceptable to the South because of the Republican platform’s commitment to opposing the expansion of slavery. Southern leaders were unequivocal and stated again and again that they had to secede because of the danger to the Southern way of life–slavery. They became fuzzy and obscurantist about it only after the war, when trying to rationalize and celebrate the Confederacy in terms that they felt the world might accept.
Foote writes to his audience, even though it skirts the truth, and some Ivan’s, I mean people, lap it up like it’s contextually accurate, when it isn’t. He’s in a position where he can educate his viewership, and instead maintains a stigma of stubbornness that seems to have lasted over 150 years.
Thanks for a great post! Though you gave up reading in the middle of the book, your argument has some magical power to move us and make us believe that your criticism is solid and accurate (even timely), partly because of your black humor and powerful satire (like a bold comparison of the Confederate battle flag and American swastika…)…Well, your post somewhat reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut whose master thesis was rejected as “it was so simple and looked too much fun.” Yet, after all, Vonnegut became a brilliant writer, who wrote wonderful books such as Slaughterhouse-five, Cat’s Cradle etc. I hope you’ll write more, inspire and entertain us with your political satire and black humor.
Thanks! Funny you should mention Kurt Vonnegut. He’s one of my favorite writers, second only to Mark Twain.
Great insights, however obvious they should be to anyone listening to Foote’s interviews or reading his writings. I got through his books myself but likewise found bits and pieces disturbing and distorting of history. BTW, I spent most of my childhood, in the ’60s & ’70s, in California, but both of my parents were from northeast Texas and my maternal grandather was born in Vicksburg, MIssissippi, in 1898. My mother told me stories of listening to her elder relatives still moaning in the 1940s about “losing” a war none of them had even lived through and for a cause that was nearly as evil as that launched by Adolf Hitler (and that it didn’t quite match up to Hitler’s cause of mass extermination and enslavement of the peoples his armies conquered does not diminish the inherent evil of the Confederate cause itself). Foote was too caught up in ancestry worship to acknowledge that the Confederacy was not simply a lost cause but an evil one too.
Exactly–well said. The real tragedy is that Foote, for all of his considerable talents and charm, couldn’t or wouldn’t face the inherent evil of the Confederate cause.
Don,
I agreed with everything you said – until the Holocaust analogy. Get a grip. Read about the Warsaw ghetto, and then read Eugene Genovese. You cannot possibly compare a program of calculated genocide with slavery, which until it was abolished, was well nigh universal.
Thanks for reading this piece! While I understand what you’re saying, I think it’s the same mindset, and comes from the same evil part of human nature. Slavery may not have been as severe, obviously, but that didn’t make any less evil–especially since the Confederacy was set up not only to preserve slavery but also to expand it and never abolish it per their Constitution.
Many of my ancestors were killed by nazis for saving Jews. I think that they stood on the same side as unionists that every man should be free. Confederates were like the nazis. They believed to be a better race. They killed Jews and Poles, enslaved many and believed they were right.
With all due respect, what the hell is your problem? Who and what are you so angry about that you feel it necessary to dig up Foote who died 15YEARS AGO or rag about Burn’s flim which is 20-25 years old???? Where the hell have you been?
OLD “NEWS”
“OLD NEWS”?? LOL, we finally, FINALLY took down the Conederate flag flying over a state building 150 years after the South LOST a war intended to preserve and EXPAND slavery. We still have even officials trying to argue the Confederate flag is not about hate, we still have mouth breathing racists flying it and adorning their vehicles with this treasonous decal–but yeah, why “dig up” Foote because he died 15 or so years ago lol… We can only talk about people who are still living?? Where the hell have you been?? The Civil War is still going on.
Footes book is southern propaganda from beggining to end but this author should have finished reading so he could see Foote in the last half of the last book repeatadly refer to black union brigades as “gorillas”. “Southern gentlemen” past and present are evil perverts.
I am all for putting a foot in your bed-wetting ass first chance I get. Bet houses on that.
Is that you, Toby Keith?
For a man to like you to express Ur ignorance of so many things, is the proof of the problem with men of your intellect.
I’d submit that your barely coherent grammar is an obvious signpost of the very thing you accuse me of. Willing to be houses you didn’t read 3 paragraphs.
I enjoyed, learned from, and was given food for thought from your peice. I think the “historical presentism” argument presented in an above comment is sort of a cop out since it was a polemical peice in its essence and therefore did carry out its purpose. Furthermore, the way our understanding of a past event evolves such as the confederate cause does not in any way undue or invalidate a critical analysis of the original intent.
I couldnt get through your whole article. It reeks of obsession and envy. Shelby Foote was too much of a gentleman to say what this Southern woman will: Fuck You
Well, that’s learned, Sarah. You may be a “Southern woman”, but you’re no lady lol…
There are many interesting thoughts in the article and in the comments. I would simply add that much of the article and its defense smacks of historical presentism and a more interesting approach might be to look at the historiography of the war and how it is remembered. This would place the article in its proper context as an evolution in the way we remember this event. I also think that allowing slavery to be placed front and center as THE cause in some ways lets Northerners off the hook. A majority of northerners WERE pro-slavery and the abolitionists a fairly radical group at the time. By demonizing the CSA we create the image of the “good guys” which is false, and clouds the other valid causes, which when combined made the war inevitable. It is also fascinating to look at the words of the CSA soldiers, only 1% of whom owned a slave, versus those of the aristocracy and its government. In the end, these type of all or nothing arguments ring false and oversimplify a very complex history. It would be nice if thought and conversation provoking articles like this one would create more meaningful discourse and not turn into name calling and silly put downs.
Thanks for reading and posting a thoughtful response!
Don,
Thanks for an interesting column. I do think you were a little rough on Mr. Foote. I have not come across any commentary by him that I would regard as anything but his honest interpretation of those events. As such his storytelling is as much a part of the history of the war and the South as the events of Chancellorsville. Refutation of statements Foote made is certainly justified, even required, when merited. But I think the type of derision you engaged in would be more appropriate for someone who was engaging in deceit to advance destructive ideas. And that is something I’ve never found in Foote.
I thinks it’s obvious countless Southerners indeed fought and died for the cause of states’ rights. It’s just that to them that right was more important than the moral problem with slavery. The disconnect seems so obvious to us today but are we so different? Perhaps one day a columnist like you will likewise be disgusted with a historian like Foote for her written history that unashamedly offers a defense of human abortion done under the banner of WOMEN’S rights…
Phenomenal article! Foote’s 3 volume trilogy is an insufferable bore. I’m a glutton for punishment; I read 200 pages of it before opting to preserve my sanity. I’d rather read Stephen Crane than waste weeks of my life on revisionist history masquerading as “narrative.” His references to African-Americans as “gorillas,” the tiresome idolatry of Jefferson Davis, the subtle resistance to acknowledge the fact that Grant was a far superior general than Lee, the litany of empirical high crimes and misdemeanors in Foote’s tome is long. If I like fiction, there are far better writers of that age I could select from.
A bit of advice: if internet crackpots are using straw men arguments, red herrings, and “alternative facts” to try to defame you, chances are you’re 100% right. My only quibble is that, if possible, I think you should edit out the bit about ‘more men in Mississippi fighting for the Union than the Confederacy.’ While you may have been mistaken, it does not take anything away from an otherwise excellent article (and to indemnify yourself against accusations of manipulating facts, it would be wise to remove/edit/elide that bit). The pseudo-intellectuals on this board will seize that as pretext to denigrate an otherwise phenomenal article. They love their fallacies and don’t let them throw the baby out with the bath water.
To quote the widely respected historian from Tennessee, Jon Meacham (when asked about the removal of Confederate monuments): “The Civil War was fought over the Confederate states’ right to own slaves. Period. Anybody arguing otherwise is simply lying. Their letters are there. We can read what Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis wrote; we can read the confederate constitution; we can read the articles of secession. None of my peers in this line of work has ever disputed this; but there seems to be a vested interest in rewriting history.”
It’s not quantum mechanics, there seems to be an ethos of post-factualism that is metastasizing over the web and obscuring widely agreed upon facts. The law of gravity is not up for debate. What I’m more interested in isn’t the Civil War (we know it was fought over Slavery and white supremacy, academic historians are in agreement despite how many flat earthers would argue to the contrary), but rather the southern cult of revisionism. In this post-factual world, what compels somebody to see clear evidence and re-write it to suit pre-existing prejudices? Why do so many southerners still feel compelled to deny the unwithering arc of history? How does one explain the cognitive dissonance inherent to a culture that is, on the one hand, hyper-patriotic (almost bordering on jingoism) about how great America is, and on the other hand a culture that clings to a belief in the “southern heritage” of slave ownership? You cannot simultaneously celebrate the union while also celebrating the institution – the Confederacy – that sought to destroy it.
Northern colonies too used to be slave-owning at one point, but I don’t see a cult of revisionist historians attempting to hide that fact. Many northerners could care less about the slaves, but that is BESIDES the point: they fought for an institution that resisted the expansion of slavery while Confederate soldiers (who could’ve easily fought for the union or abstained) fought slavery and white supremacy. I suppose those that end up on the wrong side of history will always try to pretend a fence doesn’t exist.
Best,
A Physicist Who Loves Your Blog
Why are so many people afraid of acknowledging the complexity and context of those times? Why are those who acknowledge these things effectively labeled slavery deniers?
Consider this scenario:
A group of 13 guys get together to form a social club.
They are all alcoholics.
They form bylaws that, permit everyone to bring their own bottle to the club, though they fall short of declaring everyone must do so.
After some time, half of the club decides to quit drinking.
Additionally, they pass new laws that make bringing alcohol to the club increasingly difficult, and demand that no new members may bring alcohol. Next the teetotalers said that any alcohol left on attended by the drinkers could be sees and not returned to the drinkers.
The half of the club who are still alcoholics say, “We don’t need to put up with this!” And announce their resignations from the club.
Then the fighting starts…
Would simply saying that the fight was over alcohol accurately and sufficiently record the dynamics behind the conflict? I’d say not. I know of no legitimate historian who denies the role of slavery in the Civil War, certainly not Foote.
“the role of the slavery”? LOL Slavery was the ROOT cause of the Civil War. Period. No other factor or sectional strife comes close. The Southerners at the time had no problems admitting this–simply read the secession statements from the seceding states. It was only after they lost, that the attempt was made to make this about something more than the preservation and EXPANSION of slavery. Some states left the Union simply because of Lincoln’s election before he even became President. Why is that? because of his position on tariffs? A joke. They were afraid he was going to restrict or even abolish SLAVERY. His famous “House Divided” speech rightly pointed out that our nation could not exist as half slave and half free. It was the one and ONLY issue that couldn’t be compromised on forever.
Thanks! I agree that I need to delete the incorrect Mississippi claim, but not sure if I can. I’ve recently rediscovered Bruce Catton’s Civil War trilogy and had forgotten what a good prose stylist Catton is as well as a good storyteller. I think the irony here is that he is far superior to Foote in lyricism let alone scholarship.
So well said! Love the Meacham quote as well.
*fought to PROTECT and expand slavery and white supremacy. (Sorry for the typo).
How do I share this article?
This reminds me of Mark Twain’s satirical essay about the work of James Fenimore Cooper. I read the one about Foote too. You have to admit that some of it was hilarious and pretty accurate. I saw Foote on C-SAN talking about the Nathan Forest picture on his wall. He credited him as a general but failed to mention Forest’s KKK organizing. I couldn’t believe the interviewer didn’t bring that up!
The author of the essay does say that Foote was a talented writer who just happened to be descended from slave holding aristocratic plantation owners. He does come off as racist at times. Twain saw the evil of slavery growing up, and his “Huckleberry Finn” changed minds and hearts. Mr. Foote barely mentions it any of his writing, including his novels.
Thanks! Twain’s essay about Cooper is one of my absolute favorite pieces of writing, period. Huge compliment that my piece reminded you of that!
If I have to chose between a noted historian and the writer of this article, I’ll go with Mr. Foote every time. I’ve never read such a “hit piece” in support of “revisionist history” rather than fact and actual study.
Rather than depend on Ken Burns, who is in no way a historian nor expert of America in the 19th century, I suggest the writer study actual events, as Mr. Foote did.
Most of the southern states had already outlawed slavery and there were more existing slave states in the north than the south.
It was the aggression of the north that started the war, when the CSA wanted to exercise their rights under the Constitution, and form their own, less federalized, nation. One that continued to allow States to make decisions, not a centralized government.
And by the way, the one flag that flew over slavery more than any other was not the St. Andrews Cross “Battle Flag”, but the stars and bars of the American Flag.
Please Sir? Which southern states had outlawed slavery?
Exactly.
GLB must have meant states south of Canada because as of 1860 slavery had not been outlawed in any of the Southern states, certainly not in the most northern of them — Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland & Delaware. Early in the Civil War, the federal government offered to purchase all the slaves in Delaware for the purpose of freeing them but the state government declined the offer. In 1865 all those slaves in Delaware were freed without any compensation to their former owners by the 13th Amendment, which also, of course, legally freed every slave within the United States, including the 11 defeated former Confederate States and the other 3 border states. GLB needs to improve his education considerably.
Laughable and a standard Lost Causer canard about the US Flag “flying over slavery”. Y’all are like the Borg.
A thoughtful and necessary article. I volunteer at Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation, and most folks around here (just south of Winchester, VA) act as if they think the South was robbed of their just deserts. All this blather about “states’ rights” is just that — blather. If you think this gentleman is in error, have the decency to review the statements from the Articles of Secession. Sure, the Union did not come out and state that the war was about slavery at the onset–Lincoln was too great a statesman to inflame even more citizens. Only after he saw that” the South would not cease and desist did he decide that economic warfare and moral course of abolishing the “peculiar institution” was inevitable. Those two words –“peculiar institution” — should tell the open-minded something. Slavery was and is unconscionable, although it is sad to see how “Christianity” was mobilized to defend it!!
Thank you. By the way, I was born in Harrisonburg, and later lived there for about ten years from 1995 to 2005. Amazing the amount of unhinged Lost Causers scrawling their crayons here lol. I still have a Civil War bullet I bought at a shop in Newmarket. So heavy for the size! Gives me chills at how much damage it could inflict on the human body–even a non-fatal shot would just, and did, shatter bones. That’s why there were so many amputations–no doctor could save those bones!
It sounds to me like this person still hates the south
So many Lost Causers in an uproar over this ;). I believe it is a well written and researched article! This is from a Georgia native and history teacher..
Thank you
I am not really sure why the author decided too attempt to destroy a well respected writer such as Foote, bet he obviously feel flat on his face, and lost all credibility by not reading the Narrative..I have read it and gained quite a bit of insight from its pages. Perhaps this critic would be well advised to do the same…
Perhaps you ought to take a remedial English course.
This sort of comment should be beneath you, Don.
You’re article is a piece of crap and factually incorrect. You leave out resolutions passed in 1861 by the Union stating the war was not about freeing slaves. You also leave out the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 and 1799, preserving state’s rights not delegated to the Federal gov. You twist quotes and words, but for people like you who are blind once they see trigger words and images, this is what I expect. You should read more about state rights in the formation of the original Union. You should also do more research into black regiments and legislation passed by the North. For a so called history buff since you were 9, your arguments are hallow and based off of triggered emotions. I’ll leave you with a quote from Mr. Shelby “The war turned us from an are to an is”
Any response to this article would fail to acknowledge the fact that writing it was completely unnecessary. To rifle through obscure quotes from Foote, and then painstakingly and tediously streeeeeetch them out of context seems overtly ridiculous and, again unnecessary. A man born in 1919…yes 1919, is bound to cling to a few outdated opinions, and is certainly bound to express them cumbersomely. Any man forced to constantly answer question after tiresome question, and then have each word printed, reprinted, and scrutinized over and over will surely be found at fault. Even such an eloquent and erudite man as Foote, who was indeed a reluctant celebrity, is no exception. Constantly writing “huh” in response to a dead man’s words is incredibly crude and lazy, and bears no further consideration. You are an embarrassment.
Yes, poor Shelby Foote–he’s the real victim here, lol… I think the only “embarrassment” is those like you feverishly clinging to a fiction writer who couldn’t even face the most basic fact about the cause of The Civil War.
This otoole dude seems hellbent on getting everything wrong. He starts off by misapplying a quote my grant, who was referring to secession not slavery ( grant was a slave owner himself, even after the war) and continues on a crusade of politically correct revisionism that just won’t stop.
I do find it odd that so much virulence has been directed towards all things Southern during the latest generation. I’ve never seen it this bad u til recently. I suspect that a lot of yankees are a tad jealous of Southerners and just don’t know how to deal with it in a reasonable way
There were slave owners in Grant’s family – Lincoln’s in-laws owned slaves – BUT neither Grant or Lincoln personally owned slave.
It’s obvious to any casual reader this author is biased toward the prevailing revisionist idea that the Civil War was fought to presearve Slavery and that reason alone! This is so banile and sophist in nature it really does not deserve a second thought! If this creature thinks he has addressed these ideas with anything but a Marxist ideologue’s pen he is only fooling himself! Shelby Foote spent the effort giving an unbiased pen the latitude to write a well researched account of this conflict that changed our way of life profoundly in America!
This childish essay is base and unstudied at best!
“revisionist idea that the Civil War was fought to preserve Slavery and that reason alone…” Hahaha, you’re the revisionist, so desperately wanting to believe it was about everything BUT that.
Slavery was the cause. There certainly were other bones of contention, but, without slavery, there would have been no Civil War
What’s truly “beneath me” is taking the time to respond to anyone saying citing slavery as THE cause of The Civil War as “revisionist”. That is laughable buffoonery. Not only was it a war to preserve slavery, it was a war to EXPAND slavery. Pretending it was otherwise is delusional and ignorant of history. But the motive is clear. Hard to take pride in a traitorous rebellion that tried to create a slave Republic. Yeah–best to pretend it was about EVERYTHING else BUT that when you play dress up.
The actual revisionist history was that of the white southerners who after the war pretended that the war was about anything and everything except maintaining and expanding slavery and who supposedly just wanted “to be left alone” — neglecting to add the clause, “to continue to enslave and abuse black southerners.” Just like the Nazis just wanted to be left alone to conquer their neighbors and to enslave and exterminate “inferior” peoples within their expanding empire.
Exactly!
Thank you for writing this piece. There was nothing honourable or truthful in the South’s defence of such a vile institution.
Thank you for reading it.
“One important oversight was corrected, however. Where the founding fathers, living in a less pious age of reason, had omitted any reference to the Deity, the modern preamble invoked ‘the favor and guidance of Almighty God.’”
unfortunately for you, you made kind of a boo-boo here. This is what we call irony. Foote was certainly not a faithful or traditional Christian, as any perusal of his letters would show you. Here he is ventriloquizing for the authors of the Confederate Constitution, and describing this change – in light of the 19th century’s enormous religious revival movements, which turned Christianity from a kind of mental furniture for many Americans into a profoundly moving and personal experience.
You also left out the fact that Lincoln, Foote’s so-called “opponent,” was regarded by Foote as a genius of the war, and the pages of Foote’s work drip with hagiographic praise for the man. Seriously, Foote adores Lincoln.
It’s a shame you didn’t read the book. It’s damn good narrative history. And it weakens the strength of your points, making you seem churlish and petulant.
Still, you aren’t wrong about Foote’s problems regarding race. He was pushed into increasingly contorted positions trying to defend what he knew full-well was indefensible. Watch this interview conducted shortly before the end of his life: http://www.c-span.org/video/?170042-1/shelby-foote-faulkner
Two really cringeworthy things here: first, Foote keeps saying “Forrest” when he means “Faulkner.” It’s an embarrassing mistake to make on television in any context. Yet here he does it in front of a black interviewer, who, I think, is more than charitable with Foote under the circumstances.
Second, watch as Foote describes his attitudes toward black Americans, using the word “nigger” directly to this black dude’s face. Now, if you watch the clip, it’s clear he’s trying to vocalize attitudes common at the time of his upbringing. But it’s indicative of his inset privilege and racism that he doesn’t feel the need to change his method of speaking, even when it’s directed toward a person of color.
And that sort of behavior abounds in Foote’s interviews. His correspondence with Walker Percy makes clear Foote was no segregationist bigot, and was considered progressive for his time.
But like many people, he stopped feeling the need to adapt, or alter his behavior and thinking, into old age, and his stubbornness about “tradition” and “heritage” can be positively cloying.
His points about the Confederate flag are just incoherent- the same baffling, rambling nonsense you hear from any Southerner when the topic is brought up. I wonder if its an affliction native to their region.
And his book has some serious historiographic problems: the deficit of discussion of women’s contributions to the war (there is some stuff about the sanitary commissions but not nearly enough), a failure to properly reckon with the realities of slavery and show them to the reader thoughtfully, and a cursory understanding of the political machinations of Congress at the time.
But note the description of the conduct of black troops at the Battle of the Crater in Volume III if you think Foote outright ignores the contributions of black soldiers in battle. That’s simply not the case, and he offers what I think is among the most wry criticisms of UNION racism when discussing that battle’s failure.
So if you want that, read the other books. If you want military history written with verve, you can read Foote. His attitudes about race make you uncomfortable. Well, Livy and Tacitus’s views of slavery make me uncomfortable, I still read them. Lincoln’s racist jokes made for public consumption offend me, and irritate me, but I still read his writing for its undeniable genius. A lot of Catharine MacKinnon’s work strikes me as incoherently misandrist, but she’s made valuable contributions to legal theory, and she’s a fine writer. I still read the woman.
If you’re only going to read authors who agree with your political views in all particulars, and you refuse to separate the author from a work, then
a. you’re irritating a lot of semioticians right now and
b. good luck only reading ta-nehisi coates for the rest of your life.
If you’re going to write full-blown rants, fine, but you might at least be considerate of your readers and make them a little shorter. Long-winded repetition is not an effective literary device. You make some reasonable points (yes, Steele was a white Southerner of his time) but mar your credibility by distorting a number of Steele’s positions; I barely recognized his writing in your cartoonish characterizations. Perhaps you tried to be fair but didn’t have the literary wherewithal to pull it off; heaven knows Steele is your infinite superior as a writer.
Steve Jacobson…I am sorry but who is Steele?
I am guessing you meant Foote?
Too bad you didn’t take the time to read all three volumes. An overwhelming majority of readers and history buffs recognize the Civil War a Narrative as an excellent and accurate read. You aren’t fit to carry Shelbys soiled undergarments. You sir, are a complete tool.
The 3rd grade “tool” tells us everything we need to know and your crude defense of Foote would be an embarrassment to him if he were still alive.
Read Foote many years ago, reread several times, watched Ken Burns, read Grant, Sherman, Douglas Southal Freeman, etc. If you read the southern newspaper editorials from 59 to 61, no doubt slavery is the principal reason for the war but in the context of economics of the south. There were other reasons, and most of the letters, which if you want to know the mind of the southern soldier, was to prevent invasion, they did not focus on slavery and most, for the main part, did own slaves or know slave owners.I will not even go into the flag issue but to compare to the swastika is ludicrous and insulting to the descendants of a lot of good men and women. The war was wrong , sadly it happened, but tearing down the monument and memorials is not appropriate.
Thanks for reading. The average soldier wanted to preserve slavery just as much as the wealthy planters who pushed the war. Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight. That flag has NO business being on a government building. Much less still on a state flag–especially one with as murderous a civil rights record as Mississippi.
Mr Foote wrote an amazing set of books that when read with others, does justice to the history of the time. He was a Southerner and never apologized for that-nor should he have. It is rare that the one who was not victorious in a war was able to write the history of it. Don’t condemn without knowing more information please- it makes you as guilty of being an agenda driven idiot. We have far too many of those. Historically speaking, I believe Foote called the Framers out because they refused to “deal” with the slavery issue out of concern the Constitution would never be ratified. Remember? Are we going to remove their names from our history too? Finally, the 1860s are not now. Foote took the reader there without being a time traveller with all the guilt and “progress” of the last 150 years. Excellent writer and a southern icon RIP sir.
Um, this article was not a review of Shelby Foote’s trilogy. It was a review, mainly, of the many things he said in interviews, etc. which I notice you don’t mention. Probably because they’re indefensible. Even favorable reviewers admit his trilogy is almost entirely devoid of the social and political issues going on at the same time–let alone slavery which he BARELY mentions in the course of three thousand words.
Too bad you didn’t continue reading. Best, most fascinating volumes on the Civil War I have ever read.
Mississippi has really a problem with its flag. When you take away the racism sign, all that’s left is the french “liberté, egalité, fraternité” flag: freedom, equality, brotherhood. There must be something like a “but” or minus sign on the flag. Or Missisippi has to change its values accordingly.
As a life-long liberal, I have to say that you have not given Mr Foote his due. Please read the work before you condemn it. It, above all the other histories of the Civil War I have read, provides the context and an understanding of both sides’ motivations, delusions, and foibles necessary to understand why the Civil War continues to be fought to this day. If Lincoln is truly one of your heroes, you owe it to yourself to finish this extraordinary work.
The string of deliberate misconceptions you have found in Mr. Foote’s writings reveals that his greatest accomplishment was his own self-delusion. The human ego will accept any nonsense before it will believe itself a villain.
Well said.
I’m with Joe and JM. The flags have no place flying on United States buildings or grounds but I do not object to the sale of the flags for private displays on private property.
Hearing that the Civil War was about States’ rights all these years, I’ve just had to agree. Indeed it was about States’ rights – the rights of citizens to own humans. The thought of it is appalling.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you 100%.
The Nazi reference made me laugh out loud. It renders your entire piece nothing more than Liberal tripe. Nothing better than seeing another Liberal Loon puke up his “White Guilt” and self loathing “White privilege”. Hate is the weapon of the left. As an aside, Foote’s trilogy is the best historically accurate recounting of the War of Northern Aggression in print.
Is this a parody account?
Hardly.
Still laughing about your “War of Northern aggression” comment as your talking about how historically accurate Shelby Foote’s books are.
Should be the War of Southern Sore Losers and to Expand Slavery and Inhumanity.
Funny thing is CONTEMPORARY Neo-Nazis use the Confederate Flag in tandem with the Swatzika all the time lol. That says it all. You’re an idiot who is just as deluded as Foote was.
Good post! Thanks for the insights.I won’t be reading any of Foote’s books. Keep on keepin’ on.
Don, you’re right when you say that A holocaust by any other name is still a holocaust. Some in the South continue to romanticize the Confederate Flag. I am not for outlawing the sale or private display of that flag, but no way should it ever be flown or displayed on any State or Federal Government building in this Country.