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.
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.
Good article. Thanks for posting.
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.
“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.
I used to get this magazine. It is made up of very rich, elitist hunting types. Those that guns are for me and not thee. I got tired of reading about people like
Brokov etc. and their expensive hunting and fishing trips while they berate those below them and the 2nd amendment. This magazine also refused advertising by the NRA. Yes, there were some good articles but the whole magazine is elitist BS for the BS’erts.
Foote’s account of the Civil War is truly one of the most unbiased accounts ever done. He told the truth with the bark on, unshaded by any romantic notions or regional slant. It is what every historian should aspire to, but which few succeed in doing.