Confederates in the Attic

One has to (or should) do a lot of reading and research before coming to any firm conclusions. Very few people go around with a holistic view on even the narrowest of subject, let along a large one such as the Civil War….where even this nomenclature is vigorously detested by some.

In the short or long run, it doesn’t matter. The war is over. Or at least I think it is. It sounds as if some aren’t satisfied with that outlook.

Horwitz stumbles across a little community in Georgia called Fitzgerald. After dealing with some Andersonville apologists he needed a break. Yes, even Andersonville is complicated. But only if we make it so. The conditions in prison, North and South, were often horrible. Andersonville was arguably the worst.

After listening to the worst sort of partisan drivel from some ladies about Wirz (commandant of Andersonville), Horwitz asks a wacko in the crowd at a Wirz memorial:



So Horwitz is pleased to go off to a place in Georgia (Fitzgerald) where the Blues and the Grays actually lived in harmony. It’s a good story and one that I’d never heard of. Half the streets are named after Confederate heroes. Half after Union heroes.



That makes me think of one of Timothy’s alternative histories. It seems to me we’re living in the wrong one.

About about every damn book or article I read on subjects that intersects on movies, I'll read stories of this exact same thing. I used to assume that writers were making this stuff up or exaggerating. I now think it is extremely common. And I don’t understand it.

Yes, we might wonder if any of the characters are based on real-life characters. I suppose ultimately all fiction is to some extent. But to wonder where Scarlett and Rhett are buried? I don’t get that. That’s just cuckoo.

Granted, again, it becomes a chore to know whether movies or TV series “based on a real story” have much intersection with the truth. It’s gotten so bad, I don’t tend to trust any of it although much of it is still good entertainment.

Where is Scarlett buried? I mean, did they think they were watching the 9 O’clock news when then tuned into Gone With The Wind? Seriously. You tell me. I don’t get it.

I’ve finished Confederates in the Attic. It seems like a long book and you certainly get your money’s worth, although I had checked it out for free at my local library via the Libby app.

I hope Rob is out there somewhere still doing his reenactments super hardcore. Given the hardships involved, this is definitely a young man’s sport. I hope he has by now promoted himself to general with better food, better clothes, and a tent to sleep in. Something tells me Rob would never go for that kind of Farbing.

There’s sort of a built-in epilogue to Horwitz’s account. He skips a year amd briefly tells of his last outing with Rob. They have a great time of it with a much larger group (about 30) that Rob had recruited. Rob asks Tony to stay on for another day but Tony is missing his family and young child and feels the pull of home as certainly many boys in the army (North or South) did. Many just plain missed their mommas.

Horwitz’s last couple of excursions in the South aren’t quite as interesting as some of his previous ones. But it does help to tell the whole story. And I wish I could say his book ended on a hopeful note but it does not.

Horwitz eventually is invited to a school classroom to observe. It’s a predominantly black school and the teacher is black. Long story short, throughout this book Tony has run into some outrageous people saying some outrageous things. But this was the only time he got into a heated argument with someone. This black teacher was a fruitcake. You sort of have to read between the lines a bit, but he writes that he regrets losing his cool.

But if he is reporting accurately, you can’t blame him. He ran into a hive of absolute poison. Here’s part of a short exchange with this racist teacher:



Her students are even worse. Long dead surely is the idea of “Father Abraham.”



It’s impossible to quantity white racism. But it seems clear black racism is throughly inculcated and applauded in many blacks. “White flight” is understandable if this is what they face. The dreams of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass go unfulfilled in large portions of America.

Is this the fault of whites? To some extent, sure. Racism does exist. But “racism” has become a pervasive dodge for accepting blame for the inadequacies of one’s own culture.

Life is still complicated in the South.

I downloaded “Last of the Mohicans” last night. I might try that. And it’s not the length of “Gone With the Wind” the puts me off it. I just think I’ve done enough of that era for a while. Plus the movie is just so darn good, why read the book?

In truth, I’d rather read a biography of Sherman than Grant. Some choices in that regard:

Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order. This is available in Kindle format. There are only 27 customer reviews of it but the reviews are very positive. From one of the top reviews there, it sound’s like way too much domestic stuff is included. Not interested in the battles with his wife.

William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country: A Life. This is also available in Kindle edition and has even a better rating. The first review there says its a breeze to read. Sounds interesting. This same reviewer also recommends:

Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American by B. H. Liddell Hart. This may be slanted more toward military strategy….which is the slant I’d prefer rather than endless pages about his rotten father or struggles with poverty, etc. A reviewer rwrites:



The other logical choice for a Sherman biography seems to be:

Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman

I think I’ll start with reading the free Kindle sample of Liddell Hart’s book. I’ll let you know.

As I had mentioned once, I think I have a very valuable edition of Grant’s memoirs, the two volume set of “Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant.” They’re not in mint condition but pretty near. They look like this:

I think I mentioned that I watched The Searchers again a few weeks ago. It was the first time I’d seen it in high definition and it really was a treat.

Not having read the book, the only thing that seems apparent is the lack of criticism regarding the movie that “the book was better.” They put some real effort into recreating the book and it sounds as if they did a good job. Vivien Leigh passes the threshold of mere actress and created an icon. Clark Gable was Clarke Gable which is all he needed to be. And because he was in his prime, that was particularly amazing.

One of the people that Horwitz interviews was trying to express what he thought about the Civil War and why so many remain fascinated with the Old South. He basically summed it up: A lot of people (then and now) are poor or from simple stock. But those old plantation houses and that elite life had glamour.

However much soft-focusing it must take to overlook the bad stuff, I agree about the glamour. And the movie of Gone With the Wind certainly captures that. What glamour is there today? I have to think hard. Most “glamour” is associated with the trash who pass themselves off as pop stars of one kind or another (music, movies, TV).

Real or fictitious — and certainly a little of both — Scarlett O’Hara is something worth sitting up and taking notice of. And as Horwitz notes about the Civil War, it was the last battle where one man could make a huge difference, war having become so specialized and mechanized since then. It’s a man thing, for sure, but there is/was glamour in the life of the soldier. As dangerous as it was, he was doing something amazing. He was seeing things and places he had never seen before and would never see again.

As necessary as milking cows and planting corn is, these menial pursuits will never compete with the romance of the larger stage, whether of battle or the fantastically rich.