Shelby Foote, from Mississippi, has died. He was 88. He was best
known for his three-volume work, The Civil War: a Narrative My
father got used copies when I was teenager. I’ve read them
twice, plus the beginning and the end several more times, plus
the battle of Chickamauga several times. And sometimes I’ll just
open it at hazard and read a few pages. It would be hard to
explain all the attractions of his Narrative. For one, he
manages to recapture as a southerner Lincoln’s perspective that
the Civil War was God’s drama, or fate, for his almost-chosen
people. But the most relevant reason here is that I recognized
something of myself in his writing. He once explained that
“[f]or every southern boy, it’s always in his reach to imagine
it being 1:00 on an early July day in 1863.” And in his writing
it’s clear that, though he is no partisan, the South is where
his heart lies. The truth is that America has produced four
indigenous nations (besides the prevailing one)–the South, the
African-Americans, the Mormons,