For the last twenty years of his life, Mr. Foote was a regular visitor at the Shiloh Battlefield, where he would take visitors on a guided tour of the battlefield and autographed many of his books.
Posted on 11/18/2011 8:26:03 PM PST by Stonewall Jackson
For the last twenty years of his life, Mr. Foote was a regular visitor at the Shiloh Battlefield, where he would take visitors on a guided tour of the battlefield and autographed many of his books.
A well written article about one of the greatest Civil War historians of all time.
;)
I sat for an hour or two watching Foote answer questions and discuss his books with Brian Lamb on C-Span and I was enthralled. A couple of years later I sat and watched the same show all the way through again. No one like him sharing his thoughts in that wonderful southern drawl. Amazing man. Our country was blessed to have him write about the war for our history.
On a more serious note; I never had an opportunity to meet Mr. Foote at Shiloh (I missed him by one day the first time I visited), but I have had an opportunity to meet a number of fellow Civil War historians at Shiloh, Stones River, Chickamauga, Corinth, Pea Ridge, Perryville, Munfordville, Fort Donelson, and Mill Spring. Many of them are more than happy to pass on their vast wealth of knowledge and love meeting fellow historians.
Good article. Thanks for posting.
my wife and i werethird row center at one of his lectures in denver. what a fascinating man. he described the results of the war in one sentence;
“before the war the country was refered to as united states are; after the war the country was refered to as the United States is.”
With American History not being taught in our schools and universities as prerequisite courses as it should, we’re in grave danger of losing our national heritage forever.
With American History not being taught in our schools and universities as prerequisite courses as it should, we’re in grave danger of losing our national heritage forever.
Thank you for posting this. Hub and I watched the Civil War Documentary and Shelby Foote brought it all home. What a talented historian. I would have loved to have met him.
A true Southern Gentleman. The documentary and Mr. Foote’s book taught me to love history.
I first became aware of Foote through the Ken Burns documentary. Without Foote, that documentary would not have been so fascinating, and I doubt that America would have been as captivated by it.
I remember him quoting Faulkner when he was talking about Gettysburg: “For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain...” When Foote quoted this passage, I could feel that he meant it, he had lived it.
Afterwards, I read his three-volume account of the Civil War. He was able to view the war, the various battles, as though he were taking part in them. He felt the exhaustion, the hunger, and the terror. And he made the reader feel them, too. If a person can only read one account of the Civil War, this is the one I would recommend.
I liked the closing quotation Foote read.
“In time, even death itself might be abolished; who knows but it may be given to us after this life to meet again in the old quarters, to play chess and draughts, to get up soon to answer the morning role call, to fall in at the tap of the drum for drill and dress parade, and again to hastily don our war gear while the monotonous patter of the long roll summons to battle.
Who knows but again the old flags, ragged and torn, snapping in the wind, may face each other and flutter, pursuing and pursued, while the cries of victory fill a summer day? And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will meet together under the two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughter and cheers, and all will say, Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?”
– Private Barry Benson, Army of Northern Virginia, 1880
Which is the difference between a republic and a democracy..
“Foote had Jewish ancestors in a time and place where Jews were broadly accepted in the social and cultural circles of certain Southern cities. Greenville was one of them (Foote later remarked that there were more Jews in the Greenville Country Club than there were Baptists).”
This is something that is all to often overlooked. I am from the south and 72 years old, today the PC scat is that Jews were hated in the south, but I remember no such thing.
In our small town there were two Jewish owned retail stores, both of which carried people on the books between cotton crops. Not just the farmers, but also those who chopped and picked the cotton. There was also Jewish doctors and lawyers, a small Jewish place of worship and I never recall any anti-Semitic feelings expressed.
Not many people today know of Judah Benjamin. He was Jewish and a member of the Louisiana house of representatives, in 1852 he was elected by the state legislature to the US senate from Louisiana. When the civil war commenced, he resigned from the senate and was appointed by President Jefferson Davis to three different cabinet posts in his administration, Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State. He was hated in the north and was called the brains of the Confederacy.
IIRC, the only Jewish military cemetery outside the nation of Israel is the Hebrew Confederate cemetery on Shockoe Hill in Richmond, Virginia.
His interviews were the best parts of Ken Burns' Civil War series.Realizing just now the he has a distant and understated recounting manner just like that of the only interview Carlos Gunny Hathcock presented.
Perspective of long-range suffering, the tragedy of retrospection.
Foote's best quote was about a soldier waiting to make Pickett's Charge, who saw a rabbit running away ...
The soldier said to the rabbit something like:
"Run, you old hare - if I was an old hare, I'd run too ..."
The best ficticious quote I know is from the movie, Gettysburg:
Colonel Freemantle:
"He tells me it was your uncle who defended Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. And that he was therefore the guardian of the original "Star-Spangled Banner". I must say,I do appreciate the irony of it all."
General Longstreet:
"Colonel Fremantle, it does not begin or end with my uncle or myself. We're all sons of Virginia here.
That major out there commanding the cannon: That's James Dearing. First in his class at West Point, before Virginia seceded.
And the boy over there with the color guard. That's Private Robert Tyler Jones. His grandfather was President of the United States.
The colonel behind me,that's Colonel William Aylett. Now, his great grandfather was the Virginian Patrick Henry. It was Patrick Henry who said to your King George III: "Give me liberty or give me death."
There are boys here from Norfolk, Portsmouth, small hamlets along the James River. From Charlottesville and Fredericksburg. The Shenandoah Valley.
Mostly they're all veteran soldiers now. The cowards and shirkers are long gone. Every man here knows his duty. They would make this charge even without an officer to lead them. They know the gravity of the situation and the mettle of their foe. They know that this day's work will be desperate and deadly. They know that for many of them this will be their last charge. But not one of them needs to be told what is expected of him. They are all willing to make the supreme sacrifice to achieve victory here. The crowning victory and the end of this war. We are all here.
You may tell them when you return to your country that all Virginia was here on this day."
Some good history in these posts.
I had read of Judah Benjamin and wondered if he was Jewish...
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