Interesting - good find. Several points:
1. Your original point was to counter my point that Foote tilted South. This statement, if read literally, would say that while he still tilted South, current events made him less so - as opposed to being pro Northern i..e tilting the other way.
2. He’s rewording the old saw “History doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme”.
3. Does this statement contradict his own self-stated principles? I think that is a hard one to answer. Again, if read completely literally current events are affecting his affections shall we say, not his absolute judgments. Maybe in the same way you can root for the Red Sox but objectively think the Yankees a sounder baseball team. But it is a slippery slope, I grant you, between whether you “like” an historical figure and whether you can fairly judge or make sense of their actions.
4. On a personal note, I find the statement rather pompous. “I am obligated ....” “ .....these three gentleman ....”.
It’s as if he’s assuming the gentility of the 19th century, your most obedient servant, yada, yada, yada. Yet, it’s a bit out of place in the 20th century.
I saw his pomposity as more in the vein of irony.
He was making fun of the three governors, who he didn’t see as gentlemen at all. And doing so made it more difficult for him to continue seeing the 19th century gentlemen he had revered through rose-colored glasses colored quite so strongly.
If he found the open racism and bigotry of AR, MS and AL repugnant, I think it made the even more blatant racism of the CSA less attractive or even tolerable for him. Of course, almost everyone at the time was racist by today’s standards, but obviously some were less virulently so.