The Civil War/ American Homer: A Narrative (Modern Library)

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The historians of slavery and the Civil War era Eric Foner and Leon Litwack added to these criticisms, suggesting that Foote consistently underplayed the extent of Southern white racism, in effect treating "white southerners" as synonymous with all "southerners. While Foote's work was mostly well-received during his lifetime, it has been criticized by professional historians and academics in the 21st century. By the mid-1980s, the FSSP had produced considerable new scholarship explaining both the political importance and daily brutalities of slavery, as well as the complicated transition out of it.

Shelby Foote, Historian and Novelist, Dies at 88 - The New Shelby Foote, Historian and Novelist, Dies at 88 - The New

The theme recurs in Love in a Dry Season (1951), which is set against the changing fortunes of the South from the 1920s to World War II. And David Blight’s argument about reconciliation at the expense of African Americans has been seriously challenged in the years since he made it. It allows us to convince ourselves that the dishonorable were in some way honorable; it reassures our sense of selves as inculpable white Americans; it allows us a psychological pass for the sins of our forefathers. You have to understand that the raggedy Confederate soldier who owned no slaves and probably couldn't even read the Constitution, let alone understand it, when he was captured by Union soldiers and asked, 'What are you fighting for?The Confederate general is introduced as “the courtly, unknowable aristocrat who disapproved of secession and slavery, yet went on to defend them both at the head of one of the greatest armies of all time. As protesters tore down statues in June, he told Chris Cuomo, “It’s very important for people like me, my complexion, to be as quiet as possible and to listen. Airing over a span of five nights during late September in 1990, Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” remains, to this day, the only documentary that claims to explain the entirety of the war that engulfed the United States in the mid-19th century. Foote remained adamant that slavery was not the only cause of the Civil War, stating in 2001 that "no soldier on either side gave a damn about the slaves—they were fighting for other reasons entirely in their minds. Foote, however, believed "the odds against" black people were to be "too great" for them to succeed in the US, as a result of "having a different color skin".

Civil War’: Ken Burns series turns 30 amid Breonna ‘The Civil War’: Ken Burns series turns 30 amid Breonna

Twenty years of dedicated labor have resulted in a literary masterpiece which places Shelby Foote among those very few historians who are authors of major syntheses. By focusing on a type of military history wherein all sides can be seen as—in some way—heroic, “The Civil War” allows us, as white Americans, to forget about the reasons why we were fighting in the first place. The former was a whole chapter in the second volume, and the latter excerpted from the second volume where some material was interspersed with other events. One wonders if the only thing which will satisfy the author is if, after all the statues have been demolished and all the histories destroyed, the last things to be burned on the pyre of Historical Revisionism are Southern Americans, themselves. Indeed, through lenses like theirs, the Civil War narrative would have been much more nuanced and would have encompassed of a wider set of experiences and ideas.But it is no less affecting now than it was in 1990 when the Ken Burns series, “The Civil War,” became a cultural phenomenon. Litwack concluded that "Foote is an engaging battlefield guide, a master of the anecdote, and a gifted and charming story teller, but he is not a good historian. Unfortunately, even setting Foote aside, a thread of Lost Cause glorification is stitched through the fabric of “The Civil War. Although the novelist had no experience writing serious history, Cerf offered him a contract for a work of approximately 200,000 words. The former slave-trader Forrest oversaw the infamous massacre at Fort Pillow, in which Confederate troops murdered an estimated 200 Black Union soldiers who were trying to surrender.

The Civil War by Shelby Foote - AbeBooks The Civil War by Shelby Foote - AbeBooks

The narrative describes the events and battles from Sherman's March to the Sea to Lincoln's assassination and the surrender of Lee at Appomattox. Americans would greatly benefit from a new telling of the Civil War, of its causes and effects, of its soul-crushing violence and its joyful freedoms, of its heartening triumphs and abject failures. Foote relied extensively on the work of Hudson Strode, whose sympathy for Lost Cause claims resulted in a portrait of Jefferson Davis as a tragic hero without many of the flaws attributed to him by other historians.You really get the feeling that Burns, for all of his incredible gifts as a filmmaker, he really kind of fell in love with Shelby Foote,” said James M. In his earlier life, Foote had claimed to know more about the life of African Americans in the South than James Baldwin: "I told some interviewer I knew a hell of a lot more about negroes than Baldwin even began to know. S. schools, they also quickly came to dominate popular culture as well, most famously in the wildly popular Birth of a Nation, D. Foote maintained that the KKK of the 1920s was "mostly anti-Catholic, incidentally anti-Semitic and really was not much concerned about the Negro".

New Civil War Documentary | History Why We Need a New Civil War Documentary | History

Follow Me Down (1950), considered by many critics to be his best novel, is based on an actual murder trial. The trouble begins with the documentary’s star: Shelby Foote is a southern novelist with a down-home drawl, a gift for storytelling, and a very troubling version of the events of 1861 to 1865. The author above, in her short essay here, seems to have a shallow understanding of what is wrong with Ken Burns shallow portrayal of the Civil War. The total effect is impressive—a massive synthesis of Civil War scholarship as presented by a master of words.Foote's biographer has concluded that "at its best, Foote's writing dramatised tensions related to racial and regional identity. McGrady have argued Foote "favored the South throughout the novel, portraying the Confederate cause as a fight for constitutional liberty and omitting any reference to slavery". The biggest thing I find interesting is that they stood against 4 to 1 odds and they still stood their ground which is admirable. Beginning in 1999, Time–Life published a fourteen volume "40th Anniversary Edition" with contemporary photographs and illustrations, addended with maps originally commissioned for their own 1983-87 comprehensive The Civil War book series. To acknowledge that a historical figure was kind in some settings or that they were a tactical genius does not signal acceptance of their cause or agreement with their values it simply represents a more nuanced view of history.