I have trouble taking anyone seriously who can know Nathan Bedford Forrest's history as a murderer and terrorist on behalf of slavery and present him as an heroic figure.
I can't take anyone seriously as an historian if they repeatedly overlook enslavement, murder, racism, rape, etc., and present evil people in a favorable or neutral light. That produces history that is only beliveable to one side and history that leaves out a large part of reality. In the history of the United States it leaves out THE major theme of our history, two genocides and thefts, one of land the other of people.
The United States is at its best when it is addressing its real past and trying to repair the damage to the living. Its at its worst when it uses fictionalized versions of its past to excuse continuing the crimes of its past. Or what is the Bush II junta all about?
The same goes for just about every country in the world.
In as far as Foote is concerned, if he'd not had a good speaking voice he'd be known primarily to civil war bugs and so largly ignored by the press. Might have made good Ken Burns footage (I seem to remember the book made up for Foote's ommissions of convenience) but fails as history.
I saw only bits of Ken Burns documentary (couldn't stand the music) but I did remember thinking that Shelby Foote seemed to be an affable, reasonable sort of person.
For my book group, we read "Confederates in the Attic : Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War" by Tony Horowitz. It was shocking and funny.
In it he interviewed Foote who who doesn't like "Yankees" and held many racist views.
Hmmmm.....why is this guy "respected"?
Because he actually didn't lynch someone?
As a southerner I have to interject this here - some of the my elders knew (like Foote) that the best side won the Civil War and slavery was more than wrong but was an actual national sin (one that the North must reluctantly share because many in the North did benefit from the Southern system) but these old bastards still could never completely shake their racist upbringing (and without excusing their failing) we should understand that like most of us they were not what they wanted to be but what they were. My father was not a racist but I wouldn't exactly class him as freedom-rider either but forged in the crucible of the Korean War he told me once that the best thing Harry Truman ever did was to integrate the Armed Forces. This was a clear light for me to follow and the old stupid hatreds grow weaker every generation. I hope I have passed on to my daughter an openness for even more of humanity and I hope she can pass on more...
I can't speak to Mr. Foote's views or his interactions with the interviews, but the 3-volume history of the civil war is very well written and thorough.
It is in no way a southern hagiography, unlike prior works by southern historians. The books reflect no nostalgia for the "Lost Cause" nor portrayals of southern gentlemen heroes against the evil yankee.
There's a pretty good thread on Foote over at dailykos.
And his presentation of Forrest was not as a "hero" but as something of a self-taught military genius who bedeviled much larger northern forces for years (while making no excuses for the guy - his slaughter of black prisoners is there, as I recall)
Terrier,
I have to disagree with you. I think it's not good to coddle geezers. As recent news has shown us, these fellows were responsible for more than one murder!!
I'm not saying the North isn't racist. But the racism isn't romanticized.
His three volume "Civil War" is essential reading, and widely regarded as excellent history. It's almost as fine as Woodward's "Bush at War". I must admit that I too find Foote's admiration of Bedford Forest as quite puzzling.
foote wasn't a bigot.
he was however,an eighty eight year old "southern " writer.
a narrative writer.
remember william faulkner?
don't be guilty of the religious-
right's problem of criticising
without reading.
"the civil war" was a hell of an
insightful work.
AS A POSTSCRIPT,
N.B.FORREST WAS A RASCIST,MURDERING,
SLAVE DEALING SON OF BITCH.
HE WAS ALSO THE BEST CAVALRY OFFICER
OF THE CONFEDERACY.
I REFER YOU TO THE BATTLE OF BRICE'S
CROSSROADS.
LIKE HIM PERSONALLY,I DO NOT.
RESPECT HIS TACTICAL ABILITIES,I DO.
Mr. Ailes, always stirring the pot.
I remember the way that Foote talked about N.B. Forrest. If he wasn't expressing admiration for someone he regarded as a hero I'd hate to see what he'd do about someone he did. I have known Southerners older than Foote who had no trouble coming to terms with the nature of the confederacy and its legacy.
Slavery in the United States is not limited to the Southern states. It extended as far North as Maine, Several slave burials exist in my home town and I've always known the worst kind of New England racists whose only Southern connection came in a bottle of syrupy "Southern Comfort". The problem is not regional it is endemic to the entire country. The point isn't to rerun the Civil War but it also isn't to deny the reality of slavery and the long decades of American Apartheid after that.
I'd like to think that someday we will really deal honestly with the entire history of the United States and free future generations from these silly disputes. It won't be easy but other than a liveable environment I can't think of something more worth passing one.
Nathan Bedford Forrest's savage racism did not have much to do with his exploits during the war. It was his founding of the Klan after the war that gave Forrest the opportunity to unleash his deranged hatred of black people to its fullest.
Foote doesn't deal with Forrest's post-war career (except for a short description of his death -- and that comes about because Foote does follow Jefferson Davis's later career, which included a visit to Forrest on the latter's death-bed) because his history is about the Civil War, not its aftermath. Foote admires Forrest for his bravery, his unorthodox methods of fighting, his tactical genius -- and the fact (unique for its time) that Forrest went from private to lieutenant-general based strictly on his merit as a military genius.
Foote does not ignore Forrest's pre-war career as a slave-trader (he was also a Memphis alderman and a millionaire planter), and quotes one southerner's opinion of him as follows: "I must express my distaste for being commanded by a man having no pretension to gentility -- a negro trader, gambler -- an ambitious man, careless of the lives of his men as long as preferment be en prospectu. Forrest may be, and no doubt is, the best cavalry officer in the West, but I object to a tyrrannical, hot-headed vulgarian's commanding me." Vol. 3, p. 106.
Anyone who thinks Foote admires Forrest for his racism needs to get a grip. The sad thing about Foote is that -- like Faulkner, and his good friend Walker Percy -- Shelby was never able to shake off completely the effect of growing up in a small, totally segregated town during the 1920's and 1930's, and so vestigial racist speech slips through, despite the sophistication that he learned by leaving the South. The man was born in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1917, fer chrissakes. Give him some slack. And read his book. It's damn good.
So he was never able to shake off the vestiges of growing up in a small, segregated southern town but he is no racist? Vestigial speech slips through but that doesn’t make him a racist? Is not vestigial speech a form of remnant nostalgia? No?
Define racist.
Having said that, I do own up to having read Foote's Civil War series. Foote certainly had a powerful voice in that narrative. But his silences are just as interesting as the interjections of his narrative voice. What is interesting is the places where he inserts his narrative and the places he avoids.
To rave on about Bedford's "genius" and to not express revulsion for his Klan founding, is like saying Pol Pot was a great intellectual and philosopher without being aghast and horrified at what he did with his Sorbonne education. It's like looking at Jefferson as the founding father. Only that. And not also seeing Sally Hemmings and how many years it took before she could even be acknowledged as having mothered a Jefferson line from the other side of the blanket. It's like burying in time and banishing from history William Clark’s (of the Corps of Discovery) American Indian children, one of whom ends up in the Oklahoma reservation after the Nez Perce were hunted down into surrender.
BTW, to call someone a "genius", what's that if not expressing an admiration for them?
I'm late here, but let's let W. H.Auden have a word:
"
Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful Physique
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives
Pardons cowardice, conceit
Lays its honours at their feet.
Time that with its strange excuse
Pardon's kipling and his views
And will pardon Paul Claudell
Pardons him for writing well..."
-elegy on William Butler Yeats
Foote was no Southern apologist, less of a racist that the two afore-mentioned gentlemen, and a product of his place and time.
His writing will redeem him.
Cybelle's observation about what the silences say is an important question in all of history. What gets left out, what has almost always gotten left out, is important because people act out of their concept of what the past was. People look to history to validate their actions now. That's why history matters for more than property settlements. To leave out anything other than that Foote did well in the war
It's been a while so memory can play tricks but listening to Foote and watching him talk about being allowed to swing Forrest's sword struck me as if he considered it to be a peak experience in his life.
Excusing or ignoring the unattractive aspects of Confederate officers finds its exact match in the absurd myths of the Pilgrims and Puritans seeking religous freedom, ignoring their genocide, theft, Saudi style suppression of alternative religons, certainty of their salvation and everyone elses damnation....
Unless you try to give the whole picture you are distorting history, almost always to serve a specific purpose. Often a less than noble purpose.
Ghengis Khan was a military genius, but that doesn't mean I admire him.
Forrest was a racist psychopath, but he was also a military genius. It's possible to be both, you know.
The sun has set on Auden's world. The Empire has written back and is continuing to write back, you know.
I'm always blown away by the "product of his time" argument. On face value, we accept it because who does it not apply to? Conversely, on a closer look, there are many exceptions to that rigged rule.
No, I don't think that calling someone a genius or saying they were charismatic is necessarily an expression of admiration, at least in certain fields - military geniuses can serve the wrong cause (as Shelby Foote would have agreed about Forrest) or their own megalomanic aims(like Genghis Khan). Quite a lot of people would probably say that Goebbels was a genius in the field of propaganda while holding him in well-deserved contempt as a person.
Part of the problem with Shelby Foote also may stem from the fact that he was first and foremost a military historian of the old school (where bravery and military brilliance are to be recognized on both sides and civilian politicians are frequently distrusted) and more interested in telling a good story than being a brilliant, original analyst (before his three-volume history of the Civil War, he had written novels, not non-fiction). It was noticeable in the Ken Burns series that most of the times Foote made an appearance it was to tell some funny or poignant anecdote. (Not that he did not also have his more thoughtful moments, such as his musings on the South differing from the rest of the US in having experienced a great military defeat, pointing out the hollowness of the big speech about Americans never having been defeated in "Patton" in view of Patton's father's service in the Army of North Virginia). And while he did not romanticize the war (or war in general), what made his storytelling so effective was that he very often seemed to empathize a great deal with whoever he was talking about at a given moment.
Shelby Foote's narrative of the American Civil War actually is not all that different from what you got from most military-focused Civil War historians of his and the preceding generations. The part e.g. played by Black soldiers in the war had been relegated to the memory-hole even by most Northern historians (most of whom were of course White), and the politicians North and South nearly always got a bad press - e. g. Abolitionists and Radical Republicans tended to be portrayed as haters who unnecessarily made trouble for the saintly Lincoln and later were responsible for the "excesses" or Reconstruction of the conventional Northern narrative well into the 1960s, at least.
The article by Clinton Cox you linked to probably goes a bit overboard in its portrayal of Foote as a kind of evil genius whose influence somehow was responsible for the flaws real and perceived of "Glory" and Ken Burns' "The Civil War". The mere fact that Foote was hired as an advisor on both projects does not necessarily mean that decisions to be criticized were not primarily the responsibility of the screenwriters, directors and producers. Ken Burns' series definitely has weaknesses, one of them being that after episode 1 (which dealt with US history up until 1860/61), it tended to somewhat neglect the political side of things, such as the conflicts within the Republican party and in the North in gene
neral. Generals and officers even of secondary and tertiary importance are lovingly portrayed and assessed in their significance, while a man like Thaddeus Stevens (probably the most important member of the House of Representatives) is represented only by two of his many extremely quotable quotes. (One of which Burns falsely attributed to Lincoln, while when the other one was read out, Stevens was incorrectly identified as a Senator).
Menshevik
I'm not saying the North isn't racist. But the racism isn't romanticized.
I can't deal with the history here (I have to send my civil war buff husband over, though) but I can say that this, sadly, isn't true.
As a kid I used to go to the Sleepy Hollow Restorations in Westchester semi-regularly. Phillipsburg Manor, which has a working water-powered grist mill (and makes wicked good corn meal) was full of vaguely-dutchy-looking maidens and tulips, in honor of the dutch heritage of the owners and the dutch history of New York and the fact that Ichabod Crane went for walks there in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Now we take our kid, but the museum has been repurposed to tell the story of the slaves that worked there producing provisions for ships working the triangle trade and how they were all sold down south when production slowed after the guy who built the place died.
The family took off for Canada with the Tories, not because they were British or particularly interested in the King but because as politicians they'd been gaming the system on behalf of their bread and butter business and (as such conservatives will) went with the system most likely to let them keep on with the rapine, which they seem to have believed was the british one.
I'm guessing there weren't too many tulips.
Such good comments. I must confess I looked forward to seeing Foote on Burns series, now I feel kinda guilty. As a vigilant Northener who hates racism, even I could be be lured by the gallant Confederacy, damn!! Norma
Growing up in the South, you're constantly dealing with the paradox that (otherwise) decent and lovely people still hold onto rascist notions to some degree. It actually takes a lot to overcome one's childhood influences. My own experience is that even if one completely disavows racism, the seeds of all those disgusting ideas are still buried deep in one's psyche. I like to think that that is helpful in seeing the true nature of racism.
Regarding Foote and his supposed "romanticizing" of the Confederacy, it always seemed to me that he communicated the utter tragedy of the entire enterprise. And I'd just point out that his perspective is a far cry from those who truly do romanticize the Confederacy.
.
Nathan Bedford Forrest's savage racism did not have much to do with his exploits during the war.
Two words: Fort Pillow.
I often remember a comment Foote made regarding the controversy over the Confederate Flag that now mecifully seems to be winding down. In essence he said that decent southerners allowed the flag to be taken over by racists, and so we had no one to blame but ourselves for the fact that the Stars and Bars has become synonymous with racism. I draw a parallel with what is happening in this country to Christianity. Decent Christians are allowing their religion to be represented by raging fanatics and so the perception of Christianity as an intolerant, coercive faith is growing.
Yes, one probably should take into account where Foote figuratively came from (e. g. what narrative of the "War Between the States" he learned in school, the society he grew up in, maybe even the college he attended) and see that he was definitely moving away from the cherished romantic myths of the South. (Maybe that is also part of the explanation for his fascination with Nathan Bedford Forrest, because Forrest definitely did not conform to the romantic image of the Southern Cavalier and was anything but a gentleman). In the Burns series it certainly stuck in my mind how he pooh-poohed the myth of superior Southern bravery saying that no higher bravery was displayed than by the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac in the (hopeless) charges at Fredericksburg.
Re. the Fort Pillow massacre - at the time Foote wrote his history, the controversy whether it actually happened was still not quite finished. I just started looking for the casualty figures to see if the description was fair that Forrest only stopped the killing when everyone was dead(1), when I came across this brief description:
"On April 12 he [Forrest] captured Fort Pillow, Tennessee, an action that is still controversial, some charging that his men massacred black and white soldiers after they surrendered."
This is from a chapter written by Dee Brown (of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" fame) for "The Image of War 1861-1865, vol. 4: Fighting for Time", first published in 1983 (i.e. even later than Foote's work). The findings of the post-war official enquiry into the atrocities, which recorded accounts of Black soldiers being buried alive and tents containing wounded set ablaze, were seemingly ignored here.
(1) While possibly still fair comment, the statement was not literally true - 62 out of 262 Colored Troops survived the storming of the fort.
As somebody else mentioned -- Fort Pillow.
That was during the war, not a post-war incident, and I don't think Foote gave it much but short shrift.
Yes, a good storytelling historian of the Civil War, but still tainted.
Re. Phillipsburg Manor -
can't really comment about the owners, but I have to wonder if "gaming the system on behalf of their bread and butter business and (as such conservatives will) went with the system most likely to let them keep on with the rapine" really set them apart from the other Revolutionaries. After all, most slaveowners in the 13 colonies seem to have found it compatible with their economic self-interest to be on the side opposing Farmer George, while the British did offer liberty to slaves belonging to rebels during the War of Independence. And part of the beef the 13 colonies had with George III was the temporary halt the British government had imposed on westward expansion, slowing down the process of settling the regions inland and getting rid of the "merciless Indian Savages" (to quote the Declaration of Independence).
As for claims that Foote was "conditioned" by being born in Greenville, Miss. in 1917, Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, Ga. just seven years later.
One's past can be transcended.
Nit-pick: Foote was born in 1916, not 1917.
And yes, one's past can be transcended, but it is not always an easy feat to accomplish, much less to accomplish completely. The question would have to be - is it really a reasonable expectation on our part for everyone to conform to ideals? I would not say that if you aren't a Great Man, you're a Bad Person, most humans fall somewhere in between and even most "great men and women" had/have their unattractive aspects.
I remember the Noah Griffin article at the time the Civil War series came out. I was hoping someone else remembered, because I had forgotten Griffin's name.
the people of the south respect
"that devil forrest" because
despite being outmanned,and out gunned,he just plain out-witted
his opposition.
As for claims that Foote was "conditioned" by being born in Greenville, Miss. in 1917, Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, Ga. just seven years later.
Have you ever been to Greenville? It makes Plains look like Oberlin.
Look -- it's regrettable that Foote never completely exterminated the racism in which he swam for the first 20 years of his life (Are there any of us white people who were raised in the segregated south wholly free of the virus? I don't think so.) but to jump from his use of a racial epithet that has become the most foul word in the English language only in the last 30 years to the determination that he has nothing of interest to say about the history of the Civil War is like saying Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain should be taken off the bookshelves because his black character is named "Nigger Jim" -- to say nothing of what you plan to do with Conrad's Nigger of the Narcissus.
I just LOVE when people are made-over to some kind of universal standard. We can buy into the 'melting pot' ideal for immigrants, too, there all Americans now. But the flavor comes out in the wash, if you know what I mean.
I'll admit to a knee-jerk bias against certain types; then again, I never would've predicted while growing up in PA that I would someday call NC home. The things I didn't know -- it would match in volume Foote's tome. I'd much rather read his work over my collection of biases any day of the week. Good flavor, AND an actual historian -- refreshing, considering the amount of revision currently (and officially) being perpetrated.
As is all too usual I see individuals (guilt ridden, upper middle class whites?) attempting to establish their moral superiority by applying 21st century sensibilities and mores to the 19th century. Over the years, many good and intelligent people have held racial attitudes that are completely contrary to what good and intelligent people believe today. For instance, many believed in equal opportunity for the Negro, (Oh wait!...That's racist! I meant Colored! Darn, no! That's racist.. I meant Black. Crap! What I really meant was African-Americans! Yeah, that's the ticket...Don't make me come over there and explain to you what I was just trying to illustrate.) but the thought of mixed marriages was absolutely abhorent to them. That way of thinking was simply the norm and reflected the prevailing attitudes. Now, that being said, there are some things that are inexcusable under any circumstances and at any time, like lynching, but on the whole to paint an individual as a racist and, therefore unworthy of our admiration for any aspect of their life because the person does not measure up to your modern standards of behavior is simply the height of hubris.
Those that vehemently paint Foote as a racist "doth protest too much, methinks." Hmmm... perhaps the racist paint brush splatters all who wield it indiscriminately.
As somebody else mentioned -- Fort Pillow.
That was during the war, not a post-war incident, and I don't think Foote gave it much but short shrift.
He devoted four full pages to the assault on Ft. Pillow and the two investigations into what happened there (Vol. 3, pp. 108-112) so I don't think you can say he gave it "short shrift" -- although he does tend to trust General Sherman's investigation (which Grant ordered after getting word from Lincoln to find out if black prisoners had been killed after capture), which led to no demands for retaliation, more than he does that of the Congressional blowhards who trumpeted tales of the wounded burned alive in their tents and the living buried with the dead (for which there was no evidence, but since when did a Congressman on the make ever let facts get in the way of an agenda?)
There was plenty of slaughter, but compared, to say, the first day of Antietam or the Somme, it was hardly indiscriminate, since out of 295 white and 262 black soldiers, 58 blacks and 168 whites were taken prisoner. Foote doesn't shy away from Confederate atrocities, quoting a soldier's testimony that "the poor deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy, but were ordered to their feet and then shot down", but the actual facts of the battle demonstrate little more than the not unsurprising fact that white southerners in the bloodlust of battle were more likely to kill black soldiers than white ones.
Should Foote have repeated without question the propaganda about burning the wounded in their tents because it fits with modern-day ideas about the inhumanity of the Confederates when they faced black soldiers? The truth is that Fort Pillow was a pointless bloodbath that Northern propagandists and modern hack historians with an agenda like Dee Brown have used for their own purposes when in fact it was just another brutal and nauseating example of what happens when old men give young men guns and tell them to go kill other young men for -- what? Who the fuck really knows?
Anyway, if the Union gunboat that should have provided covering fire for the defenders at Fort Pillow hadn't closed up its gun-ports because the Confederate snipers were blasting away at it and instead had done what it was supposed to do, Forrest's men (Forrest, too, considering that even in victory he had three horses shot out from under him) would have been mostly dead, and we'd be toasting the great victory of the brave black and white Union soldiers at Ft. Pillow who fought together for the glory and honor of lining the pockets of a bunch of war profiteers back in Washington.
Funny how that goes.
(Oh wait!...That's racist! I meant Colored! Darn, no! That's racist.. I meant Black. Crap! What I really meant was African-Americans! Yeah, that's the ticket...Don't make me come over there and explain to you what I was just trying to illustrate.)
I wish you would come over and explain what you were trying to illustrate. What were you trying to illustrate?
Yeah, racism is all-American. But only southerners get to use "It's deep in my bones" as an excuse.
I don't really get what the comparison with Antietam (why first day? There was no second day) and the Somme is supposed to show. The problem with the Fort Pillow massacre was that the killing was not indiscriminate, but discriminate. According to the findings of the congressional committee investigating the atrocities, there were over 300 blacks killed there, including women and children, i. e. non-combattants.
Could you perhaps supply a quote for Dee Brown using Fort Pillow to further his agenda in support of your accusations? Because the quote I mention, which treats the controversy as basically unresolved, certainly does not.
One of the problems is of course the pervasive myth that professional officers are always to be trusted over politicians and that especially where Abolitionists and radical Republicans were concerned, one could always assume that they were lying. (Add to this the Confederate myth that the "War Between the States" was NOT about slavery, even though it then generally turns out that such people have a hard time explaining what the war was to have been about instead).
And from what I've read about the matter, it seems that the Congressional investigation, which produced the findings Forrest's apologists liked least, came under a great deal more scrutiny than that of the military, which BTW was not done by Sherman - Sherman as commander-in-chief in the western theater of war was ordered by secretary of war Stanton (not Grant) to institute a military investigation and Sherman ordered general Brayman to conduct the investigation. BTW, these people worked quick: Stanton sent his order to Sherman on April 16th, and twelve days later Brayman sent in his report.
It is also worth recalling that at the time (1864), Forrest for whatever reason chose not to confront the reports in the press about the massacre and that a number of newspapers in the Confederacy accepted the truth of the massacre and justified it. Some of the more lurid details of the atrocities were in fact first reported in Confederate newspapers. The Southern witness quoted by Foote, Sgt. Achilles Clark, wrote about the massacre a week after the events in a letter to his sister and he also wrote: "I with several others tried to stop the butchery and at one time had partially succeeded but Gen. Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued." One of the problem with Fort Pillow is that there was no Confederate investigation of the charges, most of the (self-serving?) Confederate accounts of the matter are of a much later date collected by one Dr. Wyeth.
As a side-note, the uproar over Fort Pillow has frequently been compared to Allied propaganda efforts over atrocities committed by the German Army in Belgium early in World War 1 (in both cases, CSA apologists like to put "atrocities" in scare quotes). The latter were also vehemently denied by the German officers and historians, but more recent research does show that there was
actually more meat to the accusations than the Germans had been prepared to admit in their own investigations.
Who would have thought? A thread on Shelby Foote taken over by apologists for racism.
You might just as well say you would never take a jew's opinion of a gentile seriously.
I have a picture of my grandfather in his KKK uniform, Lewistown PA in the 1920s and 30s. This is the area of Pennsylvania that Carville called Alabama{everything between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on the map}. I guess Carville knew what he was talking about.
I loved Shelby Foote on the Civil War PBS series, but I obviously didn't have all the facts.
A local talk radio host talked to a conservative activist a few months ago whose group had Ann Coulter to speak. He assured the host Ann Coulter was a warm, compassionate and OPEN MINDED person.
It is a joke to think you know someone's heart simply because you have a snapshot of one short moment in their life.
A guest on a show looking at Charles Manson's life assured us that he is one of the most enlightened people you could spend an evening with, as long as your name wasn't Sharon Tate, of course.
The only saving grace of any of this is that soon the American people {and the history books} will be able to truly know the heart of George W. Bush.
Oh, good. We're continuing.
Cut Foote some slack? Why? Why should it matter that he was born in any particular place at any particular time? Did that mean that it was an impossiblity for him to consider the entire picture of the period he concentrated on in his work? I don't think it does.
Even if that's true it only means that his work is pre-conditioned to be biased and innacurate. In other words, lousy history. Lousy history can be written well but it's still not very useful except maybe as fiction.
Doesn't history stand or fall on its lack of bias and its inclusion of differing sides? As much relevant information as possible?
I was thinking about the statement above that Foote didn't like "yankees". I don't know if this is accurate, not having the time to look it up. But it isn't a sentiment that I'm unfamiliar with in some Southerners (or people from other regions of the country, by the way). I'm a New Englander born and educated, being Irish Catholic I'm not considered to be a yankee here but I imagine an Irish Catholic might be called a yankee by some.
We have people here who don't like Southerners, though they are a lot fewer than many Southerners belive. Look at the voting records of the states for the past forty years and I'll bet that you will see that Northerners have a better record of supporting Southerners for president than Southerners do.
I've ranted on about this on another blog but please forgive me pointing out that in Maine and New Hampshire we have had Southerners as our governors, Angus King (Virginia) and Mel Thomson(not sure where he comes from but he sure didn't get that accent in the White Mountains). Mass. almost had a Southerner as governor, Jn Silber (D) from Texas. If he hadn't been such a jerk to Nat Curtis on TV he may have been. While Maine had Angus King as governor the majority leader in our legislature was a native of South Carolina (Libby Mitchell, please run for the senate). What Southern state can claim to have had a Northerner as governor? The Bush Boys don't count.
I'm pretty tired of Southerners who feel free to express hatered of "yankees" and I'm calling them on it from now on. Up here we call people like who express hatred of Southerners ignorant bigots.
Shelby Foote was a product of his time and place. Accept it. He helped further the dialogue on the Civil War. Admit it. It is sheer projection to call him a revisionist. He was a writer whose milleu was a particular era in US history. Get over it. Everybody has a 'slant' and the axe grinding here is getting obnoxious. He admired NB Forrest -- so what? He admired bravery from the North, too. I'm not that worried about his character, we're all partisans here. Now, if you really want a primer on misplaced loyalty, check out Bush boys McCain and Powell -- I'll take Foote any day of the week, may he rest in peace.
Mike E, I accept it for what it is, biased history. He's hardly the first and he won't be the last to produce this kind of history. In light of your observation about the impossibilty of objectivity, let me go farther. You can choose to make your history go in favor of the oppressed or their oppressors. Unless the oppressed won and are dominant during the period of the historians life, to favor the people who were oppressing them is hardly an act of intellectual bravery. For Foote to have produced what he did in the 20th Century says something about him as a person.
What if Foote, instead of rehashing the miltary history of the Civil War, had become a recorder of the conditions of slavery during the war or the conditions of black people in BOTH the South and the North in the period covered by his specialty? A white Southerner accurately recording the sins of the ENTIRE country in very readable English? What would the meaning of his career be then? What use would it be put to?
Did anyone doubt that there was bravery on Civil War battle fields before Foote wrote on the subject? There are monuments in thousands of towns mentioning that fact, it wasn't a surprise.
I agree that all history has a point of view, it is a good thing to discuss the point of view in any discussion of an historian or their work. It matters.
Foote’s narrative does have a distinct, however muted, patina of loss threading through it. I managed to get through one and a half vol of Civil War. The undertow of cultural melancholy was too much for me as were enamouring details of battles and personas. It was not until later when I actually moved to the south that I began to see how the melancholy of defeat had become a foundation for regional identity. Growing up out west, this was not something I had expected to find when I moved to the South. Even when I was living in the north-east I did not encounter anything like this. In that sense, Foote’s voice in that narrative is a cultural relic, a relic who lived to see desegregation and was on some level uncomfortable with it. I have difficulties with the forgiving sentiments underlying the "product of his time" argument. Just to give an example, Jefferson (we are coming up on the 4th of July, a day in which he figures prominently), was a product of his time in that he had slaves and kept them until he died and then most were sold off as property. Jefferson, a "product of his times" had many neighbors who were freeing their slaves. Where was the Master of Monticello, the author of Declaration of Independence? Jefferson was not unaware of this. Those other landowners were also "products of their times" and yet were able to move in a different direction and away from that rhetorical device. I also don’t agree that NB Forrest’s clear and evident hatred for all things African was a separate aspect to his alleged military "genius". How does one separate Bedford’s cause from his hatred?
The other problem with that "product of his time" line is that it excludes the reality of the African Americans living then. They had very different aspirations and desires which cannot be contained in that "product of his time". Why would anyone want to defend Foote with that line? Unless to defend a whityfied history.
Good one, Jane. Wrong! I defend Foote only because everybody seems to leap from one pole to the other. A little balance, if you please.
Jane was calling for balance. Go into a large library and see how much Foote type history there is as opposed to history dealing with African Americans and their interests. Even with the efforts made in the past few decades there is no comparison. The history that is available is enormously weighted in favor of the lives and thoughts of white people and a large part of the pop history is weighted IN FAVOR of the Confederates.
You could read everything available and still not find balance in that sense.
I don't feel any need to balance between people who wanted to keep people as slaves and the slaves who didn't want to be kept in bondage. I have absolutely no doubt that it is the slaves and those who wanted to destroy slavery. I have absolutely no trouble saying that there is something deeply wrong with someone who has sympathy for slavers and Klansmen.
Make that:
I have absolutely no doubt that it is the slaves and those who wanted to destroy slavery who are right and that the slavers were wrong.
Long week.
I hope I'm not too late to the party... I'd just like to add this comment from the "Bibliographical Note" in vol. II (p. 971)...
"I am obligated also to the governors of my native state and the adjoining states of Arkansas and Alabama for helping to lessen my sectional bias by reproducing, in their actions during several of the years that went into the writing of this volume, much that was least admirable in the position my forebears occupied when they stood up to Lincoln. I suppose, or in any case fervently hope, it is true that history never repeats itself, but I know from watching these three gentleman that it can be terrifying in its approximations, even when the reproduction- deriving, as it does, its scale from the preformers- is in miniature."
LumpBlock, what civilized person wasn't disgusted by the antics of the likes of Orval Faubus? That was fairly easy. It's giving up long held habits of thought that is heroic.
I wasn't saying that Foote was the spawn of the devil only that he was flawed and his history was slanted in favor of the Confederates. I stand by every single thing said about his hero worship of N. B. Forrest. There is nothing positive about that terrorist and pirate. I also stand by everything I said about biased history and the bigotry of Southerners who hate "Yankees". If you have an argument about those points feel free to enlighten me with citations.
On a point made about Jefferson upthread - his slaves were sold upon his death because he died deeply bankrupt - the liquidation of his property and possession was delayed until after his death only out of deference to his Founding Father status. By many accounts he would have freed them if his financial incompetence had not made it impossible. We may face similarly limited choices as a nation soon enough.
In reply to the question "what civilized person wasn't disgusted by the antics of the like of Orval Faubus?" - those antics were extremely successful politics in the Deep South for many years before and more than a few years after Foote's note. Don't minimize the growth and courage necessary for a Foote to move away from them in public. And consider a little humility about how "civilized" some of your own opinions may look in 50 or 100 years.
VAMark, any person who was not disgusted by Orval Fabubus doesn't make it as civilized regardless of where they claimed legal residency. Foote went that far, at least, and I am happy that he did. Jefferson could have allowed his ideals to rule over his weakness for luxury and expensive stimulations at any time and freed the people he kept captive to indulge himself. There wasn't anything stopping him from doing so or to teach his heirs an essential lesson in morality. His failure to live up to his most famous words calls a judgment down upon himself that only misplaced piety has protected him from.
There were people who lived in the North and South who gave up holding people in slavery during Jefferson's lifetime, read John Woolman's Journal as well as his essays on the subject. These people must have "suffered" a lessening of their personal comfort to follow their consciences.
In any and every way that I fail to live up to the morals I profess I insist on being judged to the fullest extent of reason. I insist that people not wait until I'm dead. I want to be a better person now, in reality.
EPT -- I admire you striving to be a better person now. I cheer those who call out hypocrisy, brutality and racism. This is the historic struggle of our nation, the war against tyrrany. I mean no offense -- I'd rather have had a drink with Mr. Foote. With no regrets.
Mike E, good thing I can't drink, huh? When you're knocking back a few with Shelby, watch out for the sword.
What are you supposed to do in a discussion like this? Disney history? American Heritage? Parson Weems?
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