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Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.
Propelled by his boyhood passion for the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance.
In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of 'hardcore' reenactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandishes a rebel flag; at Andersonville, he finds that the prison's commander, executed as a war criminal, is now exalted as a martyr and hero; and in the book's climax, Horwitz takes a marathon trek from Antietam to Gettysburg to Appomattox in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the 'Civil Wargasm.'
Written with Horwitz's signature blend of humor, history, and hard-nosed journalism, Confederates in the Attic brings alive old battlefields and new ones 'classrooms, courts, country bars' where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways. Poignant and picaresque, haunting and hilarious, it speaks to anyone who has ever felt drawn to the mythic South and to the dark romance of the Civil War.
Propelled by his boyhood passion for the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance.
In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of 'hardcore' reenactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandishes a rebel flag; at Andersonville, he finds that the prison's commander, executed as a war criminal, is now exalted as a martyr and hero; and in the book's climax, Horwitz takes a marathon trek from Antietam to Gettysburg to Appomattox in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the 'Civil Wargasm.'
Written with Horwitz's signature blend of humor, history, and hard-nosed journalism, Confederates in the Attic brings alive old battlefields and new ones 'classrooms, courts, country bars' where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways. Poignant and picaresque, haunting and hilarious, it speaks to anyone who has ever felt drawn to the mythic South and to the dark romance of the Civil War.
406 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 1998
About the author
Tony Horwitz
18 books812 followersDate of Birth: 1958
Tony Horwitz was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author whose books include Blue Latitudes, Confederates In The Attic and Baghdad Without A Map. His most recent work, published in May 2019, is Spying on the South, which follows Frederick Law Olmsted's travels from the Potomac to the Rio Grande as an undercover correspondent in the 1850s.
Tony was also president of the Society of American Historians. He lived in Massachusetts with his wife, novelist Geraldine Brooks.
Tony Horwitz was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author whose books include Blue Latitudes, Confederates In The Attic and Baghdad Without A Map. His most recent work, published in May 2019, is Spying on the South, which follows Frederick Law Olmsted's travels from the Potomac to the Rio Grande as an undercover correspondent in the 1850s.
Tony was also president of the Society of American Historians. He lived in Massachusetts with his wife, novelist Geraldine Brooks.
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June 4, 2020
“Losing weight was a hardcore obsession, part of the never-ending quest for authenticity [among Civil War reenactors]. ‘If you look at pension records, you realize that very few Civil War soldiers weighed more than a hundred thirty-five pounds,’ Rob [Hodge] explained. Southern soldiers were especially lean. So it was every Guardsman’s dream to drop a few pants’ sizes and achieve the gaunt, hollow-eyed look of underfed Confederates…Rob had lost thirty-five pounds over the past year, leaving little or no meat on his six-foot-two frame. Joel, a construction worker, had dropped eighty-five pounds, losing what he called his ‘keg legs’ and slimming his beer-bellied waist from forty inches to thirty. ‘The Civil War’s over, but the battle of the Bulge never ends,’ he quipped, offering Rob a Pritikin recipe for skinless breast of chicken…”
- Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
When I was in first or second grade, I started creating books about American history: the Revolution, World War II, and – of course – the Civil War. These books had no texts, only pictures, extremely graphic pictures that – today – would probably get me invited to the psychiatrist’s office. They were constructed (in a bit of genius, I might add) out of large, rectangular pads of Norwest Bank forms, supplied by my dad. I would take the pad and turn it upside down, using the cardboard back as a cover, and the blank sides of the forms as pages.
Voila!
On one side, you have a commercial lending document. On the other, a six-year-old’s vivid rendering of the Devil’s Den at Gettysburg, with heavy emphasis supplied by a red crayon.
Later, when I was able to construct complete sentences (a skill I am still developing), I started hand-writing historical novels. The problem with writing by hand, of course, is that your hand cannot keep up with your mind. One day, in this era before personal computers, my dad took me to his office to use his word processor. We spent the entire day, there, as I poured my imagination onto the page. It was an epic of the Civil War and westward expansion, featuring clashes between opposing armies, skirmishes between cavalrymen and Indians, nasty outlaws, tornadoes, wildfires, and swollen rivers (there was also a lot of onomatopoeia, because nothing gives you a better understanding of a gunfight than “BANG!”). When I finished my opus, it was four pages long.
I was exhausted.
I never outgrew my hobby for churning out bad historical fiction. To this day, I am working on a project known – in my family – as “dad’s book.” It’s up to sixteen-hundred single-spaced pages, and nowhere near complete. My kids often ask when it’ll be done, and I tell them someday, even though it probably won’t ever reach a conclusion.
Finishing has never been the point, though. I don’t have commercial aspirations for my writing. Instead, writing has always been a way for me to connect with history, the great passion and interest of my life. Creating a character and placing him or her in a historical context requires you to develop empathy across the span of decades and centuries. It has led me to find answers to questions about ordinary people, many of those questions and answers pertaining to bathroom use. It has broadened my imagination beyond the inert cannons and marble busts that dot most battlefields.
Why am I telling you this, other than to erase any lingering doubts you might have as to whether I should seek help from a therapist? It’s because I like to think (perhaps flattering myself) that I have something in common with the Civil War reenactors who spurred Tony Horwitz to write Confederates in the Attic.
Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was living in Virginia when a reenactment spilled across his front yard. Curious, he went to talk to these men and, with the freelancer’s keen nose for a story, decided to spend a weekend with them. The reenactors were “hardcore,” involving an obsessive devotion to recreating the experience of being a soldier in the Civil War. They only wore period-appropriate garb; they only ate period appropriate food. They dieted fanatically so they could stay near the average weight of a Civil War soldier. One reenactor, the King of the Hardcore, a man named Robert Lee Hodge, even soaked his buttons in urine so they would oxidize properly. These guys were so real they didn't like reenacting battles, because you couldn’t actually fire bullets.
Inspired by this chance meeting, Horwitz sets out on a sometimes-quirky, often profound Civil War odyssey.
This journey gets off to a bit of a rocky start. The reason is that after visiting Fort Sumter – the obvious starting point – Horwitz sets out for Kentucky, and runs smack dab into a murder case.
The killer is a young black man; the victim a white man who’d been flying the Confederate flag from his pickup truck. In a long, heavy chapter, Horwitz follows the twists and turns of this story, including the trial. The journalism Horwitz displays is sharp, with strong writing and acute perceptions.
Despite the obvious quality of Horwitz’s account, this is a grim way to begin. It requires you to set aside any preconceived ideas that this is simply a comedic voyage to discover the forgotten curios of American violence, and the delightful oddballs who keep them. While there are moments of levity and wryness, and a delightful oddball or two, Confederates in the Attic has a certain seriousness of purpose that forced me to recalibrate my expectations.
Rather than making himself a character, as Sarah Vowell does in Assassination Vacation and The Wordy Shipmates, Horwitz remains at more of a distance, the somber, professional journalist. He is skilled at engaging people from all walks, and eliciting insightful responses, but he seldom challenges people, even when they are saying the most racist, idiotic things. Instead of taking them down, he maintains a certain objectivity, which can be frustrating, especially when you want him to pounce.
Confederates in the Attic gains steam once Horwitz leaves Kentucky and really gets his Civil War tour underway. He stops at battlefields and historical monuments (there is a beautiful morning walk in Shiloh, the loveliest of all Civil War sites), talks to devoted Park Rangers and amateur historians, tracks down hole-in-the-wall museums with unique, sometimes macabre collections, and even stops by to talk to Shelby Foote, who rose to fame as the kindly, gregarious raconteur of Ken Burns’ The Civil War.
(It turns out, sadly, that according to Horwitz, Foote – God rest his soul – was kind of a jerk, and a bit of a racist. It led me to track down other things Foote said and wrote, furthering my impression that he was kind of a jerk, and a bit of a racist).
Of all the people Horwitz runs across, none compares to Robert Lee Hodge, the hardcore reenactor who helped spark Horwitz’s journey. This – at last – is what I was expecting when I first cracked these pages.
Hodge is a true iconoclast, the kind of guy without a hint of artifice or self-consciousness. At least he was, at the time Horwitz was with him, before the fame that came with this book’s release. Hodge takes Horwitz on a Civil Wargasm, in which the two men attempt to cram as much Civil War into as short a period as possible.
Together, they sneak onto Antietam battlefield and sleep in the Sunken Road; they attempt to eat salt pork; they find the burial spot of Stonewall Jackson’s arm. It is a pilgrimage of the mad, the obsessed, the passionate. When Hodge shows up in the story, your attention will be rapt. This makes it all the more troubling when Horowitz, having apparently gathered enough material for his book, sort of just takes off and goes home. Without even a thank you in the acknowledgments!
Confederates in the Attic is subtitled: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. If that really was Horwitz’s point (and not some copy editor’s), he doesn’t really try to prove it, and actually does a lot to undercut it. Indeed, what you find during a lot of his travels – even in the South – is that the Civil War is just another corporatized brand. Civil War sites are so popular in part because they are presented as a patriotic celebration of internecine strife that, like a healed muscle, made the country stronger. It is the super-happy-positive interpretation of the Civil War, which is often belied by the actual facts. (Other nations that have had bloody civil wars definitely do not look upon them as fondly as Americans).
In order to escape the Disney-theme-park version of the Civil War, Horwitz has to go down some dark alleys to find the unreconstructed nuts.
But he finds them, to be sure.
To that end, the undercurrent of Confederates in the Attic is race. This is not a surprise, as slavery – despite all arguments to the contrary – was the necessary and sufficient cause of the Civil War. Interestingly, as much as Horwitz pokes and prods, overt racism rarely bubbles to the surface, carefully tamped down by the contours of Lost Cause mythology. One exception is a hillbilly bar, where Horwitz almost gets beat up.
Instead, Horwitz finds a lot of soft racism that seems more a function of class insecurity than a deep-seeded belief in white supremacy. A lot of the people Horwitz meets come across as good old boys with an abiding interest in their own regional history. Their minimization of slavery’s role, or its effect on black Americans, smacks of defensiveness of their chosen hobby. Nevertheless, this kind of soft racism allows for and supports the hard racism – police brutality, redlining, systemic inequality – that continues to divide the United States. That is, a person who denies the pernicious effects of hundreds of years of race-based slavery, followed by a hundred-plus years of discriminatory laws and enforcement, is denying the issues that are happening today, before our eyes – and before the single glass eyes of our cellphones.
For me, one of the most interesting question raised by Horwitz is why these Civil War nuts do what they do, and are what they are.
Horwitz stumbles across one possible answer when he meets Mike Hawkins. The scenes with Hawkins are the most resonant, and touching, in the entire book. Hawkins lived in a small trailer in North Carolina, working a minimum wage job at a dying factory (a factory that was dying in the 90s, and which is today, undoubtedly dead). Horwitz tells how Hawkins, at night, would slip out of the bed he shared with his wife and read Civil War books by oven-light. For some reason, this struck me as an incredibly touching, weirdly beautiful image. Here is a man trapped by what he feels is the smallness of his life, who looks to the past – he tracked down his ancestors who fought in the Civil War – to find some larger meaning to his own existence.
And really, that is the great escape provided by history. Our modern lives are much easier than the lives lived by those in previous decades. There is no doubt about that. Yet the ghosts of the past have an advantage over us: their certainty. They have reached the end of their stories. Because we live in the now, the future is unknown. We grapple with uncertainty: about jobs, finances, love, health. Now, more than ever, the future seems very shaky indeed. The only thing we know to an absolute is that our time here will end too soon.
The past, it has been written, is a different world. In that world, everything has already happened, the words have been chiseled into granite. That is a deep comfort. No matter how dark history gets, you know how things turn out, like some kind of god.
Anyone who’s read a lot of history, or even a little history, or even just glanced at a Wikipedia page once, knows that actually living in the past is a horrible idea. You would not want to get into a time machine and head back to 1861. Believe me, I’ve studied the bathroom situation. It’s not pleasant. Yet, our current lives are hampered by that uncertainty I mentioned, the fact that we won’t know the full story until the end, and the end is kind of scary.
History is an antidote of sorts. Like Horwitz, I’ve traveled to distant battlefields, and found them at dawn, when the sun is just rising. You are alone, in a place that looks like it did 150 years ago. The birds are in the trees, the sun gets caught in the gossamer mist, and if you think really hard, or really just think at all, you can hear the tramp of thousands of feet, the rumble of drums, the snap of flags. You can’t get back to the past, and you can’t know the future, but for a moment, you can exist in this incredible moment of suspension, somewhere in between. You can, for a few minutes, stop time.
Afterwards, you can leave the battlefield and grab a Sausage McMuffin, and for a moment, things will be perfect.
- Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
When I was in first or second grade, I started creating books about American history: the Revolution, World War II, and – of course – the Civil War. These books had no texts, only pictures, extremely graphic pictures that – today – would probably get me invited to the psychiatrist’s office. They were constructed (in a bit of genius, I might add) out of large, rectangular pads of Norwest Bank forms, supplied by my dad. I would take the pad and turn it upside down, using the cardboard back as a cover, and the blank sides of the forms as pages.
Voila!
On one side, you have a commercial lending document. On the other, a six-year-old’s vivid rendering of the Devil’s Den at Gettysburg, with heavy emphasis supplied by a red crayon.
Later, when I was able to construct complete sentences (a skill I am still developing), I started hand-writing historical novels. The problem with writing by hand, of course, is that your hand cannot keep up with your mind. One day, in this era before personal computers, my dad took me to his office to use his word processor. We spent the entire day, there, as I poured my imagination onto the page. It was an epic of the Civil War and westward expansion, featuring clashes between opposing armies, skirmishes between cavalrymen and Indians, nasty outlaws, tornadoes, wildfires, and swollen rivers (there was also a lot of onomatopoeia, because nothing gives you a better understanding of a gunfight than “BANG!”). When I finished my opus, it was four pages long.
I was exhausted.
I never outgrew my hobby for churning out bad historical fiction. To this day, I am working on a project known – in my family – as “dad’s book.” It’s up to sixteen-hundred single-spaced pages, and nowhere near complete. My kids often ask when it’ll be done, and I tell them someday, even though it probably won’t ever reach a conclusion.
Finishing has never been the point, though. I don’t have commercial aspirations for my writing. Instead, writing has always been a way for me to connect with history, the great passion and interest of my life. Creating a character and placing him or her in a historical context requires you to develop empathy across the span of decades and centuries. It has led me to find answers to questions about ordinary people, many of those questions and answers pertaining to bathroom use. It has broadened my imagination beyond the inert cannons and marble busts that dot most battlefields.
Why am I telling you this, other than to erase any lingering doubts you might have as to whether I should seek help from a therapist? It’s because I like to think (perhaps flattering myself) that I have something in common with the Civil War reenactors who spurred Tony Horwitz to write Confederates in the Attic.
Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was living in Virginia when a reenactment spilled across his front yard. Curious, he went to talk to these men and, with the freelancer’s keen nose for a story, decided to spend a weekend with them. The reenactors were “hardcore,” involving an obsessive devotion to recreating the experience of being a soldier in the Civil War. They only wore period-appropriate garb; they only ate period appropriate food. They dieted fanatically so they could stay near the average weight of a Civil War soldier. One reenactor, the King of the Hardcore, a man named Robert Lee Hodge, even soaked his buttons in urine so they would oxidize properly. These guys were so real they didn't like reenacting battles, because you couldn’t actually fire bullets.
Inspired by this chance meeting, Horwitz sets out on a sometimes-quirky, often profound Civil War odyssey.
This journey gets off to a bit of a rocky start. The reason is that after visiting Fort Sumter – the obvious starting point – Horwitz sets out for Kentucky, and runs smack dab into a murder case.
The killer is a young black man; the victim a white man who’d been flying the Confederate flag from his pickup truck. In a long, heavy chapter, Horwitz follows the twists and turns of this story, including the trial. The journalism Horwitz displays is sharp, with strong writing and acute perceptions.
Despite the obvious quality of Horwitz’s account, this is a grim way to begin. It requires you to set aside any preconceived ideas that this is simply a comedic voyage to discover the forgotten curios of American violence, and the delightful oddballs who keep them. While there are moments of levity and wryness, and a delightful oddball or two, Confederates in the Attic has a certain seriousness of purpose that forced me to recalibrate my expectations.
Rather than making himself a character, as Sarah Vowell does in Assassination Vacation and The Wordy Shipmates, Horwitz remains at more of a distance, the somber, professional journalist. He is skilled at engaging people from all walks, and eliciting insightful responses, but he seldom challenges people, even when they are saying the most racist, idiotic things. Instead of taking them down, he maintains a certain objectivity, which can be frustrating, especially when you want him to pounce.
Confederates in the Attic gains steam once Horwitz leaves Kentucky and really gets his Civil War tour underway. He stops at battlefields and historical monuments (there is a beautiful morning walk in Shiloh, the loveliest of all Civil War sites), talks to devoted Park Rangers and amateur historians, tracks down hole-in-the-wall museums with unique, sometimes macabre collections, and even stops by to talk to Shelby Foote, who rose to fame as the kindly, gregarious raconteur of Ken Burns’ The Civil War.
(It turns out, sadly, that according to Horwitz, Foote – God rest his soul – was kind of a jerk, and a bit of a racist. It led me to track down other things Foote said and wrote, furthering my impression that he was kind of a jerk, and a bit of a racist).
Of all the people Horwitz runs across, none compares to Robert Lee Hodge, the hardcore reenactor who helped spark Horwitz’s journey. This – at last – is what I was expecting when I first cracked these pages.
Hodge is a true iconoclast, the kind of guy without a hint of artifice or self-consciousness. At least he was, at the time Horwitz was with him, before the fame that came with this book’s release. Hodge takes Horwitz on a Civil Wargasm, in which the two men attempt to cram as much Civil War into as short a period as possible.
Together, they sneak onto Antietam battlefield and sleep in the Sunken Road; they attempt to eat salt pork; they find the burial spot of Stonewall Jackson’s arm. It is a pilgrimage of the mad, the obsessed, the passionate. When Hodge shows up in the story, your attention will be rapt. This makes it all the more troubling when Horowitz, having apparently gathered enough material for his book, sort of just takes off and goes home. Without even a thank you in the acknowledgments!
Confederates in the Attic is subtitled: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. If that really was Horwitz’s point (and not some copy editor’s), he doesn’t really try to prove it, and actually does a lot to undercut it. Indeed, what you find during a lot of his travels – even in the South – is that the Civil War is just another corporatized brand. Civil War sites are so popular in part because they are presented as a patriotic celebration of internecine strife that, like a healed muscle, made the country stronger. It is the super-happy-positive interpretation of the Civil War, which is often belied by the actual facts. (Other nations that have had bloody civil wars definitely do not look upon them as fondly as Americans).
In order to escape the Disney-theme-park version of the Civil War, Horwitz has to go down some dark alleys to find the unreconstructed nuts.
But he finds them, to be sure.
To that end, the undercurrent of Confederates in the Attic is race. This is not a surprise, as slavery – despite all arguments to the contrary – was the necessary and sufficient cause of the Civil War. Interestingly, as much as Horwitz pokes and prods, overt racism rarely bubbles to the surface, carefully tamped down by the contours of Lost Cause mythology. One exception is a hillbilly bar, where Horwitz almost gets beat up.
Instead, Horwitz finds a lot of soft racism that seems more a function of class insecurity than a deep-seeded belief in white supremacy. A lot of the people Horwitz meets come across as good old boys with an abiding interest in their own regional history. Their minimization of slavery’s role, or its effect on black Americans, smacks of defensiveness of their chosen hobby. Nevertheless, this kind of soft racism allows for and supports the hard racism – police brutality, redlining, systemic inequality – that continues to divide the United States. That is, a person who denies the pernicious effects of hundreds of years of race-based slavery, followed by a hundred-plus years of discriminatory laws and enforcement, is denying the issues that are happening today, before our eyes – and before the single glass eyes of our cellphones.
For me, one of the most interesting question raised by Horwitz is why these Civil War nuts do what they do, and are what they are.
Horwitz stumbles across one possible answer when he meets Mike Hawkins. The scenes with Hawkins are the most resonant, and touching, in the entire book. Hawkins lived in a small trailer in North Carolina, working a minimum wage job at a dying factory (a factory that was dying in the 90s, and which is today, undoubtedly dead). Horwitz tells how Hawkins, at night, would slip out of the bed he shared with his wife and read Civil War books by oven-light. For some reason, this struck me as an incredibly touching, weirdly beautiful image. Here is a man trapped by what he feels is the smallness of his life, who looks to the past – he tracked down his ancestors who fought in the Civil War – to find some larger meaning to his own existence.
And really, that is the great escape provided by history. Our modern lives are much easier than the lives lived by those in previous decades. There is no doubt about that. Yet the ghosts of the past have an advantage over us: their certainty. They have reached the end of their stories. Because we live in the now, the future is unknown. We grapple with uncertainty: about jobs, finances, love, health. Now, more than ever, the future seems very shaky indeed. The only thing we know to an absolute is that our time here will end too soon.
The past, it has been written, is a different world. In that world, everything has already happened, the words have been chiseled into granite. That is a deep comfort. No matter how dark history gets, you know how things turn out, like some kind of god.
Anyone who’s read a lot of history, or even a little history, or even just glanced at a Wikipedia page once, knows that actually living in the past is a horrible idea. You would not want to get into a time machine and head back to 1861. Believe me, I’ve studied the bathroom situation. It’s not pleasant. Yet, our current lives are hampered by that uncertainty I mentioned, the fact that we won’t know the full story until the end, and the end is kind of scary.
History is an antidote of sorts. Like Horwitz, I’ve traveled to distant battlefields, and found them at dawn, when the sun is just rising. You are alone, in a place that looks like it did 150 years ago. The birds are in the trees, the sun gets caught in the gossamer mist, and if you think really hard, or really just think at all, you can hear the tramp of thousands of feet, the rumble of drums, the snap of flags. You can’t get back to the past, and you can’t know the future, but for a moment, you can exist in this incredible moment of suspension, somewhere in between. You can, for a few minutes, stop time.
Afterwards, you can leave the battlefield and grab a Sausage McMuffin, and for a moment, things will be perfect.
January 17, 2008
OK, so I'm on a Civil War road trip with my Significant Other, following the official Virginia state "Lee's Retreat" tour and reading to him from "Confederates in the Attic" to pass the time. The section we were reading dealt with the bigger-than-life owner of an old general store that he had turned into a museum (of sorts).
I said "this is really over-the-top -- Horowitz maybe exaggerated this guy to make a better story." S.O. said: "we should try to find the place" and just then, we pass an old general store. SO slows the car, then backs up, and damned if the guy described in the book, Jimmy Olger, isn't sitting outside, shooting the $#!t with some of the locals. And he's MORE colorful than described - it anything, Horowitz played it down a little.
So after being guided through his store and hearing all of his tall tales about it, we wander across the street to a hitorical house, with a marker showing it as part of the Official "Lee's Retreat" Tour. The sign says "tour guide available across the street". We turn, and there's Mr. Olger, waving to us. We give him a donation, and we're off on another tour, this one of his ancestors' house, which was involved in one of the last battles of the war. But to listen to him, you would have thought it happened yesterday, and he was being a Bigger Man by showing hospitality to two interloping Yankees who may have well shot up his great Grandma's house themselves.
Being Yankees, we've put the Civil War behind us, but didn't realize until reading this book and touring the South, that many Southerns have not. Anyone wishing a deeper understanding about why the South is as it is today, why there's the whole "Red State/Blue State" thing will want to read this book. On the other hand, if you don't give a flying leap about all that, but like a good yarn, and want to meet some interesting and colorful characters, this book is for you, too.
I said "this is really over-the-top -- Horowitz maybe exaggerated this guy to make a better story." S.O. said: "we should try to find the place" and just then, we pass an old general store. SO slows the car, then backs up, and damned if the guy described in the book, Jimmy Olger, isn't sitting outside, shooting the $#!t with some of the locals. And he's MORE colorful than described - it anything, Horowitz played it down a little.
So after being guided through his store and hearing all of his tall tales about it, we wander across the street to a hitorical house, with a marker showing it as part of the Official "Lee's Retreat" Tour. The sign says "tour guide available across the street". We turn, and there's Mr. Olger, waving to us. We give him a donation, and we're off on another tour, this one of his ancestors' house, which was involved in one of the last battles of the war. But to listen to him, you would have thought it happened yesterday, and he was being a Bigger Man by showing hospitality to two interloping Yankees who may have well shot up his great Grandma's house themselves.
Being Yankees, we've put the Civil War behind us, but didn't realize until reading this book and touring the South, that many Southerns have not. Anyone wishing a deeper understanding about why the South is as it is today, why there's the whole "Red State/Blue State" thing will want to read this book. On the other hand, if you don't give a flying leap about all that, but like a good yarn, and want to meet some interesting and colorful characters, this book is for you, too.
June 27, 2021
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Proposed alternative title: "Delusional Idiots LARP to Revisionist Fanfiction About Their Beloved Treason War."*
*with some exceptions
I bought this book about ten years ago and then forgot about it. While going through my shelves, I thought it might be interesting to read and at first it was but probably not in the way the author intended. CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC is basically a written documentary chronicling the South's obsession with the Civil War and how they revise and glorify their own history to further their own ends. Whoever said "history is written by the victors" clearly hasn't been to the U.S. South.
This was published in the late-90s and I'm not sure the author would have taken the same tone had he written this book today. The people he interviews, many of them racists who feel a little too comfortable spouting slurs or using the N-word, are portrayed as quirky characters who are free spirits that don't believe in coloring in the lines and abiding by PC Culture. You just know a lot of these assholes ended up voting for Trump.
And here's the thing: portraying that kind of attitude as harmlessly funny is why we ended up with "fake news" bullshit, partisan stances on BLM and anti-Asian Hate, and January 6th. I'm not blaming the author here, to be clear, but it is sort of a retrospective of how certain parts of the U.S. have kind of festered in their isolationism, and how the rest of the country was content to look askance and leave them to it while chuckling behind closed doors. There were parts of this book that I really did enjoy, like the Black individuals he interviewed for their opinions (and they had some very good and interesting things to say that had the nuance I was expecting from the book as a whole), and the chapter on Gone with the Wind, which had some interesting details about Margaret Mitchell and an Scarlett O'Hara impersonator who looks like a cross between Andie Mcdowell and Vivien Leigh.
This book is very well written and I can see why it won awards but it ended up pissing me off and I am just not looking to feel pissed off when I read a book, unless it's the powering sort of pissed off that makes you want to take action. Definitely doesn't age well and I would be unlikely to recommend.
P.S. Black comedians, Key and Peele, have an excellent sketch about Civil War reenactments and I kept thinking about it while I was reading. TWs: racist Black stereotypes (for satire and political commentary).
2 stars
July 17, 2007
In Confederates in the Attic, journalist Tony Horwitz explores the ways in which the Civil War is still present in Southern culture.
I was a Civil War re-enactor in junior high and high school, and I particularly appreciated his chapter on that very strange hobby: "A Farb of the Heart." (Farb, by the way, is re-enactor slang for all things inauthentic.)
I've not always been impressed with Horwitz's books (I thought Baghdad without a Map to be particularly slight), but here he really nails it. For instance, he perfectly captures the cliquishness of re-enacting: the overweight, middle-aged farbs wearing second-hand work boots and puffing innocently on Marlboros; the hardcores who feel "that crowds of spectators interfered with an authentic experience of combat"; the civilian sutlers, nurses, and Lee & Lincoln impersonators; the few embittered ex-Real Deal guys who like to massage their tattoos and grouse, "Just like the real military -- a continual fucking screw-up" -- everyone distrusting everyone else.
There's the phenomenon of way too many people (including yours truly) wanting to be Confederate: "When I play Northern, I feel like the Russians in Afghanistan," a guy from freaking New Jersey explained. (This was pre-9/11, of course. Would he now say that he feels like the Marines in Fallujah?) There's the usual griping over who has to die in battle. There's the mind-blowing romanticization of everything, right down to Hello: "It's an era lost that we're trying to recapture," a woman washing clothes in a tub told Horwitz. "Men were men and women were women. It was less complicated." When a guy ambles past and says, "Evening, ma'am," the woman practically faints at how Gone with the Wind it all is. "See what I mean? No one's that polite in real life any more."
This is where re-enacting starts to make me cranky. What's the matter with these people?! People are still polite! And today, we get the added bonus of NOT mowing each other down by the hundreds of thousands on backyard battlefields!
One objection to what I found in Horwitz: An accountant from Connecticut who was nevertheless "fighting" for the South argues, "We're not here to debate slavery or states' rights. We're here to preserve the experience of the common soldier, North and South." That's mostly true, but the guys in my unit debated states' rights endlessly. They honestly believed the North was wrong. They honestly believed the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. This was hard to take, even in junior high school. "I hate to call it a hobby," continues the accountant, "because it's so much more than that. We're here to find the real answers, to read between the lines in the history books, and then share our experience with the spectators."
Real answers? There's a mystical element to re-enacting that I just don't get. These guys -- the hardcore ones, anyway -- know their history chapter and verse. But it's micro-history. They know their shirt buttons. The real answers -- whatever those are -- can't be found in shirt buttons I don't think.
I was a Civil War re-enactor in junior high and high school, and I particularly appreciated his chapter on that very strange hobby: "A Farb of the Heart." (Farb, by the way, is re-enactor slang for all things inauthentic.)
I've not always been impressed with Horwitz's books (I thought Baghdad without a Map to be particularly slight), but here he really nails it. For instance, he perfectly captures the cliquishness of re-enacting: the overweight, middle-aged farbs wearing second-hand work boots and puffing innocently on Marlboros; the hardcores who feel "that crowds of spectators interfered with an authentic experience of combat"; the civilian sutlers, nurses, and Lee & Lincoln impersonators; the few embittered ex-Real Deal guys who like to massage their tattoos and grouse, "Just like the real military -- a continual fucking screw-up" -- everyone distrusting everyone else.
There's the phenomenon of way too many people (including yours truly) wanting to be Confederate: "When I play Northern, I feel like the Russians in Afghanistan," a guy from freaking New Jersey explained. (This was pre-9/11, of course. Would he now say that he feels like the Marines in Fallujah?) There's the usual griping over who has to die in battle. There's the mind-blowing romanticization of everything, right down to Hello: "It's an era lost that we're trying to recapture," a woman washing clothes in a tub told Horwitz. "Men were men and women were women. It was less complicated." When a guy ambles past and says, "Evening, ma'am," the woman practically faints at how Gone with the Wind it all is. "See what I mean? No one's that polite in real life any more."
This is where re-enacting starts to make me cranky. What's the matter with these people?! People are still polite! And today, we get the added bonus of NOT mowing each other down by the hundreds of thousands on backyard battlefields!
One objection to what I found in Horwitz: An accountant from Connecticut who was nevertheless "fighting" for the South argues, "We're not here to debate slavery or states' rights. We're here to preserve the experience of the common soldier, North and South." That's mostly true, but the guys in my unit debated states' rights endlessly. They honestly believed the North was wrong. They honestly believed the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. This was hard to take, even in junior high school. "I hate to call it a hobby," continues the accountant, "because it's so much more than that. We're here to find the real answers, to read between the lines in the history books, and then share our experience with the spectators."
Real answers? There's a mystical element to re-enacting that I just don't get. These guys -- the hardcore ones, anyway -- know their history chapter and verse. But it's micro-history. They know their shirt buttons. The real answers -- whatever those are -- can't be found in shirt buttons I don't think.
February 21, 2023
In this informative book, Tony Horwitz investigated all the reasons for the continued fascination about the Civil War. Over a two year period, he visited most of the battlefields in both the North and the South. He talked to visitors of the sites as well as the caretakers and rangers. Horwitz took part in reenactments of famous battles with participants from both parts of the country. The appeal, often bordering on obsession, are varied: nostalgia for a romanticized past, interest in war or playing war, political ideologies.Some of the key beliefs that resulted in the Civil War were still prevalent in1998 when this book was published and are still evident today.
Confederates in the Attic is packed with interesting facts both historically significant and trivial, but funny and bizarre. The following are some I thought noteworthy.
1. Some Confederates known as the Irreconcilables (the number varies from a band to 20,000) left for
Brazil after the war. It was hoped they would grow cotton and a cotton industry would benefit the
Brazilian government. The city of Americana still survives.
2. Sleeping outside in inclement weather required ingenious ways to retain body heat. Soldiers would
stretch out facing the same direction. Someone would yell,”spoon right" and they would all turn
over to the right. To warm the other side, “spoon left” was called.
3. General Thomas Jackson was given the name Stonewall when General Barnard Bee declared to his
troops, “Look, men. There is Jackson standing like a stone wall."
4. Mattresses at the time had hemp ropes underneath which could be tightened if they sagged. Hence,
the term, "sleep tight".
5. A more open prison exchange policy would have saved many of the 13,000 Union soldiers who died
at Andersonville.
6. North and South often called the same battle by different names. The Southerners tended to name
battles after nearby towns, while Northerners chose geographic features.
The author’s writing style made this book a pleasure, even though the material might otherwise have been dull and boring. I really appreciated his sense of humor. He admitted that he, too, has had a strong interest in this awful war. I guess I am in that boat too.
Confederates in the Attic is packed with interesting facts both historically significant and trivial, but funny and bizarre. The following are some I thought noteworthy.
1. Some Confederates known as the Irreconcilables (the number varies from a band to 20,000) left for
Brazil after the war. It was hoped they would grow cotton and a cotton industry would benefit the
Brazilian government. The city of Americana still survives.
2. Sleeping outside in inclement weather required ingenious ways to retain body heat. Soldiers would
stretch out facing the same direction. Someone would yell,”spoon right" and they would all turn
over to the right. To warm the other side, “spoon left” was called.
3. General Thomas Jackson was given the name Stonewall when General Barnard Bee declared to his
troops, “Look, men. There is Jackson standing like a stone wall."
4. Mattresses at the time had hemp ropes underneath which could be tightened if they sagged. Hence,
the term, "sleep tight".
5. A more open prison exchange policy would have saved many of the 13,000 Union soldiers who died
at Andersonville.
6. North and South often called the same battle by different names. The Southerners tended to name
battles after nearby towns, while Northerners chose geographic features.
The author’s writing style made this book a pleasure, even though the material might otherwise have been dull and boring. I really appreciated his sense of humor. He admitted that he, too, has had a strong interest in this awful war. I guess I am in that boat too.
June 3, 2023
Revised Review written July 2022
(Star rating adjusted as well)
Confederates in the Attic is travel writing in service to a thoughtful examination of the divide that still lingers more than 150 years after the end of our Civil War. When I first read it, it seemed to be on point, a balanced viewpoint, laced with humor. I originally wrote:
”Horwitz shines light into some of the darker corners of our national psyche, and holds up a mirror for us all to examine ourselves and how we respond to these issues.”
When I first read it, I considered it the best book I read that year.
In a post November 2016 world, and particularly in light of the events of January 6th, 2021, my original take on this book appears naive in the extreme. Its social perspective now seems something out of a misty-hazed past that was always more myth than reality. The brilliant writing hasn’t changed, nor has Horwitz’s clever hook and approach to his story. But everything else is transformed.
Civil War re-enactors served as Horwitz's launching point. His encounter camping with re-enactors inspired the idea of the book. He wrote:
”the scheme I'd plotted while spooning in the night was to spend a year at war, searching out the places and people who kept memory of the conflict alive in the present day."
The problem with the book’s perspective starts here. Horwitz never gives a hard challenge to the world view he encountered with these Rebel re-enactors — not to their faces, which is understandable, but not in his writing either. It is a perspective that continues throughout the book. He labored so hard at being balanced in his presentation that he presented an almost value neutral picture.
In his travels below the Mason and Dixon line, Horwitz encounter horrific examples of toxic Lost Cause propaganda. He attended a celebration of Robert E. Lee's birthday, where throw -back believers still indoctrinate their children with an official Lost Cause catechism:
Q. “What causes led to the War Between the States?”
A. “The disregard of those in power for the rights of the Southern States.”
Q. “What was the feeling of the slaves toward their masters?”
A. “They were faithful and devoted and were always ready and willing to serve them."
Horwitz presents this and many other instances of Lost Cause Mythology in action as a curious oddity separating our culture. He seems blissfully unaware at how toxic, how potentially dangerous these beliefs are. While he probably couldn’t have had the access he needed if he had directly challenged them more, he also failed to accurately measure the seriousness of the situation in his writing.
In my original review I wrote that:
”The greatest strength of Horwitz's book is the fascinating people that he introduces to us. No matter what their beliefs, he always manages to show us their humanity, and never reduces them to caricatures, no matter how fringe their ideas or practices may be. Because he refuses to patronize his subjects, his critique of them is all the more powerful.”
While I still admire seeing individuals in all their humanity, and not turning them into caricatures, I feel that not challenging the toxic beliefs that they hold was a major shortcoming of this otherwise excellent book. In fact, the only viewpoint he significantly challenged at all in the book was that of a Black response to the toxic mythology that oppressed their lives. The fact that I failed to note this in my first reading is embarrassing.
Like all of the late Tony Horwitz’s writing, Confederates in the Attic remains an interesting, funny, and sometimes thoughtful book, still worth reading. But in light of the world we now live in, it stands as a monument to a time past, and a naivety that we can no longer afford.
My Original Review written in 2004
(Original Review gave 5 stars)
Confederates in the Attic is simply outstanding. Entertaining and thought provoking, by turns disturbing and laugh out loud funny, it is by far the best book that I have read this year. Tony Horwitz has combined travel writing, a humorous look at an odd hobby, and an insightful examination of deep, sectional differences that still divide our nation nearly a century and a half after the end of our Civil War. Along the way, he shines light into some of the darker corners of our national psyche, and holds up a mirror for us all to examine ourselves and how we respond to these issues.
Civil War re-enactors served as Horwitz's launching point for this fine book. It was his encounter with a group of re-enactors that initially re-ignited his childhood fascination with the Civil War, and eventually led to this book. He joined a group of "hard-core" re-enactors, a fringe elite inside re-enactor circles that go to gargantuan lengths to achieve authenticity, and heap scorn on anyone who does not do the same. He marched with them in period costumes complete with authentic stench, ate their rancid food, and slept with them, huddled together in the bitter cold under the stars. He shows us their world, where achieving a connection with an imagined lost past, chasing after a transcendent state that some of them call ""wargasm", is more important, more real than anything else they do in their lives.
While with the re-enactors, Horwitz conceived the idea for this book. He writes,
The scheme I'd plotted while spooning in the night was to spend a year at war, searching out the places and people who kept memory of the conflict alive in the present day."
As almost all of the war happened below the Mason and Dixon line, this meant spending a year travelling around the South. Throughout his travels, his discoveries ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. He attended a celebration of Robert E. Lee's birthday, where throw-back believers still indoctrinate their children with an official Lost Cause catechism:
Q. “What causes led to the War Between the States?”
A. “The disregard of those in power for the rights of the Southern States.”
Q. “What was the feeling of the slaves toward their masters?”
A. “They were faithful and devoted and were always ready and willing to serve them."
He investigated conflicts, where Civil War symbols such as a Rebel mascot in a school or the Confederate battle flag were tearing communities apart, even when those involved had little or no knowledge of the actual history behind the symbols. (The battle flag incident actually prompted the murder of a young man.) And he visited a town in Georgia, where the streets are named after Civil War generals both North and South, and that was founded specifically in the hope of reconciliation and the healing of old wounds.
The greatest strength of Horwitz's book is the fascinating people that he introduces to us. No matter what their beliefs, he always manages to show us their humanity, and never reduces them to caricatures, no matter how fringe their ideas or practices may be. Because he refuses to patronize his subjects, his critique of them is all the more powerful.
With Confederates in the Attic, Tony Horwitz has written a first-rate book that is wonderfully entertaining and greatly informative. He raises questions about divisiveness in our nation that all of us should thoughtfully consider. It is a book that you will love to read, and hate to finish. It has my highest recommendation.
(Star rating adjusted as well)
Confederates in the Attic is travel writing in service to a thoughtful examination of the divide that still lingers more than 150 years after the end of our Civil War. When I first read it, it seemed to be on point, a balanced viewpoint, laced with humor. I originally wrote:
”Horwitz shines light into some of the darker corners of our national psyche, and holds up a mirror for us all to examine ourselves and how we respond to these issues.”
When I first read it, I considered it the best book I read that year.
In a post November 2016 world, and particularly in light of the events of January 6th, 2021, my original take on this book appears naive in the extreme. Its social perspective now seems something out of a misty-hazed past that was always more myth than reality. The brilliant writing hasn’t changed, nor has Horwitz’s clever hook and approach to his story. But everything else is transformed.
Civil War re-enactors served as Horwitz's launching point. His encounter camping with re-enactors inspired the idea of the book. He wrote:
”the scheme I'd plotted while spooning in the night was to spend a year at war, searching out the places and people who kept memory of the conflict alive in the present day."
The problem with the book’s perspective starts here. Horwitz never gives a hard challenge to the world view he encountered with these Rebel re-enactors — not to their faces, which is understandable, but not in his writing either. It is a perspective that continues throughout the book. He labored so hard at being balanced in his presentation that he presented an almost value neutral picture.
In his travels below the Mason and Dixon line, Horwitz encounter horrific examples of toxic Lost Cause propaganda. He attended a celebration of Robert E. Lee's birthday, where throw -back believers still indoctrinate their children with an official Lost Cause catechism:
Q. “What causes led to the War Between the States?”
A. “The disregard of those in power for the rights of the Southern States.”
Q. “What was the feeling of the slaves toward their masters?”
A. “They were faithful and devoted and were always ready and willing to serve them."
Horwitz presents this and many other instances of Lost Cause Mythology in action as a curious oddity separating our culture. He seems blissfully unaware at how toxic, how potentially dangerous these beliefs are. While he probably couldn’t have had the access he needed if he had directly challenged them more, he also failed to accurately measure the seriousness of the situation in his writing.
In my original review I wrote that:
”The greatest strength of Horwitz's book is the fascinating people that he introduces to us. No matter what their beliefs, he always manages to show us their humanity, and never reduces them to caricatures, no matter how fringe their ideas or practices may be. Because he refuses to patronize his subjects, his critique of them is all the more powerful.”
While I still admire seeing individuals in all their humanity, and not turning them into caricatures, I feel that not challenging the toxic beliefs that they hold was a major shortcoming of this otherwise excellent book. In fact, the only viewpoint he significantly challenged at all in the book was that of a Black response to the toxic mythology that oppressed their lives. The fact that I failed to note this in my first reading is embarrassing.
Like all of the late Tony Horwitz’s writing, Confederates in the Attic remains an interesting, funny, and sometimes thoughtful book, still worth reading. But in light of the world we now live in, it stands as a monument to a time past, and a naivety that we can no longer afford.
My Original Review written in 2004
(Original Review gave 5 stars)
Confederates in the Attic is simply outstanding. Entertaining and thought provoking, by turns disturbing and laugh out loud funny, it is by far the best book that I have read this year. Tony Horwitz has combined travel writing, a humorous look at an odd hobby, and an insightful examination of deep, sectional differences that still divide our nation nearly a century and a half after the end of our Civil War. Along the way, he shines light into some of the darker corners of our national psyche, and holds up a mirror for us all to examine ourselves and how we respond to these issues.
Civil War re-enactors served as Horwitz's launching point for this fine book. It was his encounter with a group of re-enactors that initially re-ignited his childhood fascination with the Civil War, and eventually led to this book. He joined a group of "hard-core" re-enactors, a fringe elite inside re-enactor circles that go to gargantuan lengths to achieve authenticity, and heap scorn on anyone who does not do the same. He marched with them in period costumes complete with authentic stench, ate their rancid food, and slept with them, huddled together in the bitter cold under the stars. He shows us their world, where achieving a connection with an imagined lost past, chasing after a transcendent state that some of them call ""wargasm", is more important, more real than anything else they do in their lives.
While with the re-enactors, Horwitz conceived the idea for this book. He writes,
The scheme I'd plotted while spooning in the night was to spend a year at war, searching out the places and people who kept memory of the conflict alive in the present day."
As almost all of the war happened below the Mason and Dixon line, this meant spending a year travelling around the South. Throughout his travels, his discoveries ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. He attended a celebration of Robert E. Lee's birthday, where throw-back believers still indoctrinate their children with an official Lost Cause catechism:
Q. “What causes led to the War Between the States?”
A. “The disregard of those in power for the rights of the Southern States.”
Q. “What was the feeling of the slaves toward their masters?”
A. “They were faithful and devoted and were always ready and willing to serve them."
He investigated conflicts, where Civil War symbols such as a Rebel mascot in a school or the Confederate battle flag were tearing communities apart, even when those involved had little or no knowledge of the actual history behind the symbols. (The battle flag incident actually prompted the murder of a young man.) And he visited a town in Georgia, where the streets are named after Civil War generals both North and South, and that was founded specifically in the hope of reconciliation and the healing of old wounds.
The greatest strength of Horwitz's book is the fascinating people that he introduces to us. No matter what their beliefs, he always manages to show us their humanity, and never reduces them to caricatures, no matter how fringe their ideas or practices may be. Because he refuses to patronize his subjects, his critique of them is all the more powerful.
With Confederates in the Attic, Tony Horwitz has written a first-rate book that is wonderfully entertaining and greatly informative. He raises questions about divisiveness in our nation that all of us should thoughtfully consider. It is a book that you will love to read, and hate to finish. It has my highest recommendation.
January 1, 2021
In the late 1990’s author Tony Horowitz explored “the South” and its relationship with the Civil War. He starts with battle re-enactors and moves on to visit museums and historians. He covers contemporary issues, walks battlefields, reports on monuments and the feelings they evoke. He meets notables and everyday people, civil rights leaders and those active in keeping “southern culture” alive.
Horowitz holds your attention throughout. You come away with the feeling that mourning and saluting the “lost cause” are key parts of southern life. Some local governments and many organizations are devoted to keeping this flame alive. Horowitz regularly hears an outright hatred for Yankees, the federal government and denial (ignorance of) about slavery, Andersonville and the reasons for the war.
The author being Jewish adds to a dimension as he notes the role of this minority in southern life; he meets those who spout conspiracy theories about Jews.
Blacks, with plenty of reason to feel outside this culture are not alone in their skepticism. Horowitz also finds white hold outs, even in confederate museums and among the re-enactors.
The episodes that stand out in my mind:
• Elements about -re-enacting and the pilgrimage are sometimes called the “civil wargasms”.
• The interview with Shelby Foote (he does not come off well).
• The chapter about the last living widow of a CSA soldier (the over-adulated family shows authenticity while its story does not).
• Businesses such as one that rents Civil War/Gone with the Wind characters and/or makes quality Confederate themed products that is founded/owned by a Yankee.
• The contemporary issues from this trip such as a racially charged murder in Charleston, adding an Arthur Ashe statue to Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA, the renaming of a high school team, and attracting tourists who may be more interested in civil rights that the civil war remain today, 20+ years after the trip.
The book should have some photos and Rob Hodge, who added a lot of substance, should appear in the Acknowledgements.
There is a lot of food for thought here. A re-tracing of these steps in the late 2010’s is in order.
Horowitz holds your attention throughout. You come away with the feeling that mourning and saluting the “lost cause” are key parts of southern life. Some local governments and many organizations are devoted to keeping this flame alive. Horowitz regularly hears an outright hatred for Yankees, the federal government and denial (ignorance of) about slavery, Andersonville and the reasons for the war.
The author being Jewish adds to a dimension as he notes the role of this minority in southern life; he meets those who spout conspiracy theories about Jews.
Blacks, with plenty of reason to feel outside this culture are not alone in their skepticism. Horowitz also finds white hold outs, even in confederate museums and among the re-enactors.
The episodes that stand out in my mind:
• Elements about -re-enacting and the pilgrimage are sometimes called the “civil wargasms”.
• The interview with Shelby Foote (he does not come off well).
• The chapter about the last living widow of a CSA soldier (the over-adulated family shows authenticity while its story does not).
• Businesses such as one that rents Civil War/Gone with the Wind characters and/or makes quality Confederate themed products that is founded/owned by a Yankee.
• The contemporary issues from this trip such as a racially charged murder in Charleston, adding an Arthur Ashe statue to Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA, the renaming of a high school team, and attracting tourists who may be more interested in civil rights that the civil war remain today, 20+ years after the trip.
The book should have some photos and Rob Hodge, who added a lot of substance, should appear in the Acknowledgements.
There is a lot of food for thought here. A re-tracing of these steps in the late 2010’s is in order.
November 23, 2023
“Wars leave what’s called ‘ghost marks’ on the landscape.” (4.5 stars)
I first read CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC in the late 1990s. I recall liking it then, keeping a copy on my bookshelf, and reading other books by Tony Horwitz. When I learned of of his death at a young age (I think 60?) I picked up a copy of his last book, SPYING ON THE SOUTH. Before reading that one, I decided to revisit the first book of his I had ever read.
This travelogue is essentially a ten state journey through the former Confederacy, examining the fallout from the American Civil War 130 years after it ended. It is sometimes frightening, often funny, occasionally touching, and unusually profound in the most unexpected of places.
This text is a reflection of its time, and I mean that in a good way. It is sadly ironic to read how divided Horwitz found the nation in the mid-nineties. Yet, the book has a pretty consistent theme that most people that Horwitz meets want to focus on our shared history, not our divided history. Yet, now, in late 2023, the media and other of their ilk (that’s not a compliment) want to focus on segregating our past, divide social groups, and push moral superiority based on skin color or ethnicity. It’s gross, and it’s not progress. As Horwitz makes clear in his writing, this would not set well with him. Those who come across most negatively in this text are people like that, who ironically are now considered legitimate voices, but at the time of this book’s composition were considered fringe.
There is a lot to say about this text, but one particular highlight for me was an interview that Mr. Horwitz has with Shelby Foote, the late Civil War historian. It was so refreshing to read as it is a reminder of a time when someone could have thoughts that were nuanced and thought provoking and not get canceled.
The chapter that follows this interview about the battle of Shiloh is also very good!
Another highlight was the awesome chapter 10, “The Civil Wargasm”. In this chapter Horwitz accompanies a hard core Civil War reenactor on a whirlwind tour of Virginian Civil War sites of interest. The reenactor, a man named Robert Lee Hodge, is a consistent presence in the text, and a memorable part of the book’s experience.
Quotes:
• “The present- I live it, it holds no mystery. The past does.”
• “They can remember the war all they want, so long’s they remember they lost.”
• “Glory had a cost. I’m here so people will remember that.”
• “I’m not going to go through this museum rewriting the past just to please someone in the present.”
• “I lay awake, afflicted by the creeping paranoia known only to 4 A.M. insomniacs- especially those camped illegally in a foggy ditch where the dead once lay in heaps.”
• “I feel honored because I wasn’t stained by college. Education isn’t everything, at least not the formal kind.”
• “You can’t miss something you never had and if you never had it, you don’t know what it’s all about.”
There is a moment in the book that I found personally very moving. Horwitz writes of the inevitable collision of imaginative childhood with unimaginative adulthood in a manner that pierced my heart, as I lived the experience he was describing. I was that same Civil War obsessed child, losing my way/interest as a young adult as the fires of childhood imagination burned out, and finally coming back to the topic with a renewed interest in early middle age.
CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC is well written, and always interesting. But more importantly it observes without passing judgment (for the most part) and that is the key to why it is so good. It’s not interested in judgement, or moral superiority. Actions speak for themselves, something that is reprehensible is reprehensible because it is wrong, and that will be obvious to any reader. This text is a reflection of people, in their good and bad graces, and a presentation of all sides of a story.
May this become the standard once again, and very soon.
I first read CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC in the late 1990s. I recall liking it then, keeping a copy on my bookshelf, and reading other books by Tony Horwitz. When I learned of of his death at a young age (I think 60?) I picked up a copy of his last book, SPYING ON THE SOUTH. Before reading that one, I decided to revisit the first book of his I had ever read.
This travelogue is essentially a ten state journey through the former Confederacy, examining the fallout from the American Civil War 130 years after it ended. It is sometimes frightening, often funny, occasionally touching, and unusually profound in the most unexpected of places.
This text is a reflection of its time, and I mean that in a good way. It is sadly ironic to read how divided Horwitz found the nation in the mid-nineties. Yet, the book has a pretty consistent theme that most people that Horwitz meets want to focus on our shared history, not our divided history. Yet, now, in late 2023, the media and other of their ilk (that’s not a compliment) want to focus on segregating our past, divide social groups, and push moral superiority based on skin color or ethnicity. It’s gross, and it’s not progress. As Horwitz makes clear in his writing, this would not set well with him. Those who come across most negatively in this text are people like that, who ironically are now considered legitimate voices, but at the time of this book’s composition were considered fringe.
There is a lot to say about this text, but one particular highlight for me was an interview that Mr. Horwitz has with Shelby Foote, the late Civil War historian. It was so refreshing to read as it is a reminder of a time when someone could have thoughts that were nuanced and thought provoking and not get canceled.
The chapter that follows this interview about the battle of Shiloh is also very good!
Another highlight was the awesome chapter 10, “The Civil Wargasm”. In this chapter Horwitz accompanies a hard core Civil War reenactor on a whirlwind tour of Virginian Civil War sites of interest. The reenactor, a man named Robert Lee Hodge, is a consistent presence in the text, and a memorable part of the book’s experience.
Quotes:
• “The present- I live it, it holds no mystery. The past does.”
• “They can remember the war all they want, so long’s they remember they lost.”
• “Glory had a cost. I’m here so people will remember that.”
• “I’m not going to go through this museum rewriting the past just to please someone in the present.”
• “I lay awake, afflicted by the creeping paranoia known only to 4 A.M. insomniacs- especially those camped illegally in a foggy ditch where the dead once lay in heaps.”
• “I feel honored because I wasn’t stained by college. Education isn’t everything, at least not the formal kind.”
• “You can’t miss something you never had and if you never had it, you don’t know what it’s all about.”
There is a moment in the book that I found personally very moving. Horwitz writes of the inevitable collision of imaginative childhood with unimaginative adulthood in a manner that pierced my heart, as I lived the experience he was describing. I was that same Civil War obsessed child, losing my way/interest as a young adult as the fires of childhood imagination burned out, and finally coming back to the topic with a renewed interest in early middle age.
CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC is well written, and always interesting. But more importantly it observes without passing judgment (for the most part) and that is the key to why it is so good. It’s not interested in judgement, or moral superiority. Actions speak for themselves, something that is reprehensible is reprehensible because it is wrong, and that will be obvious to any reader. This text is a reflection of people, in their good and bad graces, and a presentation of all sides of a story.
May this become the standard once again, and very soon.
August 24, 2015
An excellent exposé on the continuing history of the Civil War and the attitudes that persist. More importantly it (rightly) links the use of the rebel flag with the modern civil rights movement and discounts its Civil War usage. Horwitz also exposes the racist attitudes hidden within societies such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans who try to market themselves as legitimate and historical groups. For those who have not experienced first-hand the radical attitudes of these groups (such as the SCV), some of his anecdotes may seem unrealistic. However, as someone who has seen the SCV at work, as well as other so-called heritage societies in action in my hometown (Cumberland, MD) and at my college (Gettysburg), I am in the unfortunate position to be able to verify that such attitudes still prevail. In the end, perhaps his most important achievement with this work is to demonstrate why it is dangerous for society and individual groups to fixate on a single moment in history and fail to take into account either events previously or post. The issue over the use of the "rebel flag" is such a case where when one time period is focused on, a different scrap of truth is captured. Horwitz has brilliantly shown the whole picture.
While Horwitz attempts to leave the legitimacy of these groups open to the readers' interpretation, since it is rather clear from his writing that he has formulated a negative opinion about at least some of these so-called southern heritage societies, it would seem that he could have created a stronger conclusion by actually having one. I feel that he provides fantastic evidence for an argument while somehow failing to make one.
This reading should be paired with Andrew Ferguson's "Land of Lincoln" which is also a good overview of how and why the Civil War continues to capture the American imagination. Ferguson however fails to delve into the groups' beliefs (such as the SCV) whom he discusses, and their racial biases.
While Horwitz attempts to leave the legitimacy of these groups open to the readers' interpretation, since it is rather clear from his writing that he has formulated a negative opinion about at least some of these so-called southern heritage societies, it would seem that he could have created a stronger conclusion by actually having one. I feel that he provides fantastic evidence for an argument while somehow failing to make one.
This reading should be paired with Andrew Ferguson's "Land of Lincoln" which is also a good overview of how and why the Civil War continues to capture the American imagination. Ferguson however fails to delve into the groups' beliefs (such as the SCV) whom he discusses, and their racial biases.
February 20, 2020
Since I've spent most of my life in the South, and since I'm a fan of Gone with the Wind, I almost always find myself rooting for the Confederates. [edit: I NO LONGER FEEL THIS WAY. WHAT A STUPID THING TO THINK. I APOLOGIZE FOR BEING A DUMB BUTTHOLE.]
This is, of course, fully 150 years after the war, which I did not have to live through, and after the Emancipation Proclamation, which I also did not have to wrestle with. It's difficult to analyze my ancestors' ideals with my 21st century criteria.
This is the problem Horwitz runs into as well: how do you reconcile the "good old days" with the horrors of slavery? Do people who revere the Confederacy also wish that all of the Old South's institutions were still in place? Why do so many people, after so many years, still idolize the losers of our country's bloodiest war?
For a Southerner, speaking of the Civil War often involves careful, deliberate articulation of ideas, a thoughtfully worded dance in which one must deride her heritage but still celebrate it. Tony Horwitz explores this dichotomy and attempts to understand why the Civil War is still such a big deal in the New South by speaking to re-enactors, activists, Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, and good ol' boys who will defiantly fly the rebel flag 'til they die.
It would be easy to call names and take sides--shoot, the best way to start a fight anywhere in the South is to bring up the Confederate flag--but Horwitz manages to remain mostly unbiased, which must have taken a lot of self-control. It is, in fact, his research into the death of a Kentucky man, a murder by a group of black men which may have been instigated by the victim's flying the rebel flag, that is most unsettling, both for Horwitz AND for me.
At times I was proud of the Southerners Horwitz ran into, and at times I was embarrassed. I suspect it's the same no matter what region you're traveling: there are good people and bad people everywhere, and the crazies just shout louder and get more media coverage.
As for me, I'm still not sure which side I'd choose, if I were forced. [edit: YES I DO; I’D FIGHT FOR THE SIDE THAT DOESNT BUY AND EXPLOIT PEOPLE. IM SORRY FOR BEING A DUMB IDIOT.]
It's probably the same choice most Civil War soldiers also had to face: do you fight for your family or for your country?
There's no easy answer. [YES THERE IS. BOY, CULTURAL INDOCTRINATION SURE GOT ME, BUT I HOPE IM SMARTER NOW.]
This is, of course, fully 150 years after the war, which I did not have to live through, and after the Emancipation Proclamation, which I also did not have to wrestle with. It's difficult to analyze my ancestors' ideals with my 21st century criteria.
This is the problem Horwitz runs into as well: how do you reconcile the "good old days" with the horrors of slavery? Do people who revere the Confederacy also wish that all of the Old South's institutions were still in place? Why do so many people, after so many years, still idolize the losers of our country's bloodiest war?
For a Southerner, speaking of the Civil War often involves careful, deliberate articulation of ideas, a thoughtfully worded dance in which one must deride her heritage but still celebrate it. Tony Horwitz explores this dichotomy and attempts to understand why the Civil War is still such a big deal in the New South by speaking to re-enactors, activists, Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, and good ol' boys who will defiantly fly the rebel flag 'til they die.
It would be easy to call names and take sides--shoot, the best way to start a fight anywhere in the South is to bring up the Confederate flag--but Horwitz manages to remain mostly unbiased, which must have taken a lot of self-control. It is, in fact, his research into the death of a Kentucky man, a murder by a group of black men which may have been instigated by the victim's flying the rebel flag, that is most unsettling, both for Horwitz AND for me.
At times I was proud of the Southerners Horwitz ran into, and at times I was embarrassed. I suspect it's the same no matter what region you're traveling: there are good people and bad people everywhere, and the crazies just shout louder and get more media coverage.
As for me, I'm still not sure which side I'd choose, if I were forced. [edit: YES I DO; I’D FIGHT FOR THE SIDE THAT DOESNT BUY AND EXPLOIT PEOPLE. IM SORRY FOR BEING A DUMB IDIOT.]
It's probably the same choice most Civil War soldiers also had to face: do you fight for your family or for your country?
There's no easy answer. [YES THERE IS. BOY, CULTURAL INDOCTRINATION SURE GOT ME, BUT I HOPE IM SMARTER NOW.]
June 19, 2022
Although my personal preference is for books such as
Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth
,
The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society
and
The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won
, that deconstruct the lies and delusions of Lost Causers and neo-Confederates, Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic is a valuable book about the practitioners of such Civil War disinformation. His entry point is among men and women who participate in Civil War re-enactments, often with obsessive attention to detail. These folks can pinpoint errors in uniform and performance that no average person would ever care to notice; they have memorised the exact times of Confederate and Union troop movements; they hold trivia contests at which they can show off their knowledge of Civil War minutiae.
It's not all fun and games and trivia, however. During his travels, Horwitz discovers an underbelly of resentment and racism, and is exposed to a romantic vision of the Confederate cause that denies the drive to protect and preserve the institution of slavery (which more than one white southerner insists wasn't so bad anyway). He attends a meeting at which children are indoctrinated with the out-there perspective of the Lost Cause, where they are asked to answer basic questions about the Civil War with elaborate lies and excuses for the men in grey that are flatly contradicted by the historical record. At various points he is informed of his hosts' views on segregation, civil rights, and the state of the modern world. Virtually all neo-Confederates deny they are racists, but you won't have much trouble guessing what their takes on those subjects are.
This is an enlightening book about people living in an alternate reality where fanfiction and wishful thinking trump reality. That the book itself, published in 1998, has yet to become a relic of the past is quite saddening. The neo-Confederate movement remains a nuisance to anyone attempting to have serious discussions about the cause and consequences of the U.S. Civil War, and it's never a surprise to see a Confederate battle flag unfurled at a white supremacist rally. Neo-Confederates may have forgotten a past which puts the lie to their views, but they refuse to move on.
It's not all fun and games and trivia, however. During his travels, Horwitz discovers an underbelly of resentment and racism, and is exposed to a romantic vision of the Confederate cause that denies the drive to protect and preserve the institution of slavery (which more than one white southerner insists wasn't so bad anyway). He attends a meeting at which children are indoctrinated with the out-there perspective of the Lost Cause, where they are asked to answer basic questions about the Civil War with elaborate lies and excuses for the men in grey that are flatly contradicted by the historical record. At various points he is informed of his hosts' views on segregation, civil rights, and the state of the modern world. Virtually all neo-Confederates deny they are racists, but you won't have much trouble guessing what their takes on those subjects are.
This is an enlightening book about people living in an alternate reality where fanfiction and wishful thinking trump reality. That the book itself, published in 1998, has yet to become a relic of the past is quite saddening. The neo-Confederate movement remains a nuisance to anyone attempting to have serious discussions about the cause and consequences of the U.S. Civil War, and it's never a surprise to see a Confederate battle flag unfurled at a white supremacist rally. Neo-Confederates may have forgotten a past which puts the lie to their views, but they refuse to move on.
March 10, 2013
Tony Horwitz's grandfather was an immigrant - like many before him he left his country and went to look for a new life in America. Although he could neither speak nor read English when he arrived from Russia, Horwitz the elder nonetheless purchased a book - a tome on the Civil War, which he continued to pore over until his death at 102. When young Tony was growing up, his father read him stories about the war instead of fairytales, which inspired him to paint a mural of the war in the attic of their house. Years later, after he became a journalist and spent some time abroad, Horowitz returned to the U.S. and to the question which has rekindled in his mind - why was his grandfather so interested in the Civil War in a land that he barely knew, making great effort to read a book on it in a language that he could barely understand? Why is the Civil War still an important element in the lives of many Americans? Is the conflict really over and are the states really united?
Horwitz reported from places where he was exposed to conflict - Bosnia, Iraq, Northern Ireland - and received the Pulitzer Prize for National Journalism in 1994 for his articles about low wage workers in America. When a group of Civil War reenactors were passing near his house on their way to a battlefield, he couldn't resist and had to join them - that's how Horowitz met Robert Lee Hodge, a great reenactment fan and participant and a "true hardcore". It is his picture on the book cover - Hodge's attention to the Confederate look and mannerism included devotion to minute details, and made him virtually undistinguishable from an actual Confederate soldier.
After spending a day with Hodge and being impressed by their passion for the subject, Horowitz's interest in the Civil War has rekindled; he decided to spend a year touring the states where the war took place, searching for the places and people who kept the memory of the conflict into the present day. His travels will took him from the Carolinas, where he attended the Lee-Jackson Day and visited the Fort Sumter - where the first bullet was shot; through Kentuck, where he investigated the murder of Michael Westerman, a man shot by black teenagers for displaying the Confederate flag on his car - and was almost beaten up in a shady saloon; he visits the famous Shelby Foote, author of The Civil War: A Narrative - probably the best known narrative history of the war; he engages in a "Civil WarGasm" - a week long journey through various battle sites in Maryland and Virginia, in authentic Civil War gear and sleeping under the open skies; in Georgia he looks for memories of Gone With the Wind and visits a former Confederate Prison; in Alabama he meets Alberta Martin, who was believed at the time to be the last Confederate widow.
Horowitz didn't receive the Pulitzer for nothing. He is a great storyteller, who is passionate about the subject and has a great ability of finding interesting people to talk to - and actually lets them speak. The book is not a comprehensive social study, and doesn't pretend to be - it's a collection of interesting encounters and events that happened to its author. It's not biases to any particular side - Horwitz doesn't engage in stereotyping and bashing of the region and its people, and is genuinely interested in what they think about the war and why they think that. Stories of hardcore reenactors who sneer at "farbs" - reenactors who are perceived to not care about historical authenticity - and are willing to take extreme measures to ensure that they are as authencic as possible, paying attention to the tiniest seams of their uniforms and deliberately starving themselves to keep the weight of the average starved soldier in that period. It's disturbing to see individuals speaking of a "Lost Cause" lost in the "War Between The States", and trying to minimize the issue of slavery in the war, refusing to recognize it as an obvious evil and focusing instead on romanticizing the war and the Confederate leaders, who fought for states' rights - and passing this view onto their children. Will the relevance of the war to society diminish with the passing of generations, or are the differences irreconcilable?
Although Confederates in the Attic is just a collection of snapshots into the lives of people and the war - as Horowitz himself acknowledges, since he did not manage to squeeze in Louisiana, Florida and Texas - it is a book definitely worth reading, and is bound to get its readers interested in learning more about this fascinating and diversive topic. It's a riveting excursion into the nation that never was, and whose ghost still haunts within the borders of America.
Horwitz reported from places where he was exposed to conflict - Bosnia, Iraq, Northern Ireland - and received the Pulitzer Prize for National Journalism in 1994 for his articles about low wage workers in America. When a group of Civil War reenactors were passing near his house on their way to a battlefield, he couldn't resist and had to join them - that's how Horowitz met Robert Lee Hodge, a great reenactment fan and participant and a "true hardcore". It is his picture on the book cover - Hodge's attention to the Confederate look and mannerism included devotion to minute details, and made him virtually undistinguishable from an actual Confederate soldier.
After spending a day with Hodge and being impressed by their passion for the subject, Horowitz's interest in the Civil War has rekindled; he decided to spend a year touring the states where the war took place, searching for the places and people who kept the memory of the conflict into the present day. His travels will took him from the Carolinas, where he attended the Lee-Jackson Day and visited the Fort Sumter - where the first bullet was shot; through Kentuck, where he investigated the murder of Michael Westerman, a man shot by black teenagers for displaying the Confederate flag on his car - and was almost beaten up in a shady saloon; he visits the famous Shelby Foote, author of The Civil War: A Narrative - probably the best known narrative history of the war; he engages in a "Civil WarGasm" - a week long journey through various battle sites in Maryland and Virginia, in authentic Civil War gear and sleeping under the open skies; in Georgia he looks for memories of Gone With the Wind and visits a former Confederate Prison; in Alabama he meets Alberta Martin, who was believed at the time to be the last Confederate widow.
Horowitz didn't receive the Pulitzer for nothing. He is a great storyteller, who is passionate about the subject and has a great ability of finding interesting people to talk to - and actually lets them speak. The book is not a comprehensive social study, and doesn't pretend to be - it's a collection of interesting encounters and events that happened to its author. It's not biases to any particular side - Horwitz doesn't engage in stereotyping and bashing of the region and its people, and is genuinely interested in what they think about the war and why they think that. Stories of hardcore reenactors who sneer at "farbs" - reenactors who are perceived to not care about historical authenticity - and are willing to take extreme measures to ensure that they are as authencic as possible, paying attention to the tiniest seams of their uniforms and deliberately starving themselves to keep the weight of the average starved soldier in that period. It's disturbing to see individuals speaking of a "Lost Cause" lost in the "War Between The States", and trying to minimize the issue of slavery in the war, refusing to recognize it as an obvious evil and focusing instead on romanticizing the war and the Confederate leaders, who fought for states' rights - and passing this view onto their children. Will the relevance of the war to society diminish with the passing of generations, or are the differences irreconcilable?
Although Confederates in the Attic is just a collection of snapshots into the lives of people and the war - as Horowitz himself acknowledges, since he did not manage to squeeze in Louisiana, Florida and Texas - it is a book definitely worth reading, and is bound to get its readers interested in learning more about this fascinating and diversive topic. It's a riveting excursion into the nation that never was, and whose ghost still haunts within the borders of America.
November 25, 2019
This books was deep, if you’ve never really had interest in the civil war this one is for you! The author did such a great job on keeping this non biased and the way he wrote this was so good that it was never boring!!! This is the way we should teach our youth about American history!!! Honest and interesting!!!!
April 7, 2013
I had to get this one back to the library, so I'm going on memory a bit. Generally, I really like this book, though I'm still mystified over the reenactment craze. And I'm saying this as a Virginian who grew up with the Civil War, could rattle off casualty figures for various battles (both North and South), called people north of the Potomac, "Yankees," and who even went to a Robert E. Lee High School (of which there must be dozens throughout the South). At some point, I just didn't care that much about it anymore, but then along came Ken Burns impressive series on the war, which (though Horwitz doesn't say so, at least not directly), seemed to coincide with various political wars of the then-present. Since I'm reading this book several years after its writing, those political wars have only gotten nastier. So the book now looks like something prophetic, except these days the new "Rebs" wave snake flags rather than the Stars & Bars. Horwitz is a gentle guide, but with a good eye, and a fantastic ear for funny (and often logic-free) conversations. Things often get wacky, and, when it comes to Andersonville, bizarre, as apologists for the Confederate Captain Wirtz, hold a memorial on the anniversary of his hanging. Horwitz mostly runs with the Rebs (though usually dressed in blue), probably because that's where most of the re-enactors seem to head. He proves himself to be "hard core," but the kind that can walk away from Dixie Land knowing enough is enough.
October 2, 2015
I stumbled across this book by accident. It’s fascinating, if often depressing. I’ve always maintained that if reenactors were really serious about authenticity, they’d issue live ammunition. Nevertheless, Horwitz, whose immigrant great-grandfather became obsessed with Civil War history, also caught the bug, and when they discovered a TV crew shooting a scene in the land next to their house in Maryland, decided to investigate what makes Confederate reenactors (they hate to be called that preferring terms like “living historians”) tick.
Unfortunately, many of them can’t get over the fact they lost. Refusing to call it the Civil War (they prefer “War Between the States” which it wasn’t called at the time) they revel in southern mythology which they pass along to their children in organizations like the Children of the Confederacy’s catechism. “Yankees hate children,” the kids are taught; slaves revered their masters; and the war had nothing to do with slavery, they just didn’t want the government to tell them what to do (ironic in light of southern demands that northern states enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws.)
Just to get a few things straight: 1. Nowhere in the Constitution is the right to secede mentioned; it’s in the Declaration of Independence. 2. Southern states all said in their proclamations of secession that their reason was slavery; to argue otherwise is disingenuous. 3. We could refocus the debate over slavery by redefining the issue as one about "property." Slaves were considered property. The Constitution protected property. Supreme Court decisions through 1857 consistently considered slaves to be property. The Founders wrote in many compromises in the Constitution to protect the rights of southern plantation owners (of which they could include themselves, most of them.) David Blight (Race and Reunion) has noted that slaves by 1860 were worth about $3.5 billion, an enormous sum then and of course the southern plantation owners didn't want to give up their property. The cotton business was booming and had doubled in value every decade for four decades before 1860. Ironically, one might posit that the southern states needed a strong federal government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts and it was states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who insisted on "states' rights by passing laws making enforcement of federal Fugitive Slave laws difficult. Southern states, in their declarations of secession documents, said the reason for secession was their desire to protect slavery (see South Carolina and Georgia esp., which also makes reference to slaves as property and their constitutional right thereto). Slavery and race have sullied this country for centuries; to whitewash it is rather sickening. As Bernard Malamud wrote in The Fixer: "There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil."
A constant theme is the power of symbols and nothing illustrates that more than his dispassionate recounting of the killing of Michael Westerman in Guthrie, Kentucky. Westerman was out driving in his red truck with a large rebel flag flying from the back. What the flag meant to those involved was far less important than what it meant to those who used Michael’s death as a rallying cry for their own particular agenda or hatred. Horwitz’s interviews reveal that Michael liked the battle flag simply because it matched his truck. To the kid who shot him, clearly unintentional through the side of his truck as they raced along the highway at 85 mph, it was only a symbol of the white bullies in town. Michael's glorification -- he has his own tribute website -- was not what Horwitz heard from others in town when he interviewed them. Much of the town’s reverence for the battle flag seemed to be exacerbated by the school board’s wish to change the mascot -- the Rebel, which served only to inflame teams they had to play. Ironically, Guthrie, in Todd County, Kentucky was on the Union side during the Civil War. In a further irony, Freddie Morrow who did the shooting, was sent to prison for life plus an extra four years for violating Westerman’s civil rights. More recently, the power of that symbol was demonstrated when that kid shot up the black church killing several people and calls have echoed throughout the south for and against removal of confederate symbols.
Lots of interesting stories.Horwitz writes well, with compassion, and with humor. My wife thought the book (we listened to it together) was a bit reminiscent of Bill Bryson. I agree he has the same sense of irony that has you smile except that in the case of this book that smile is followed by a quick grimace rather than a broad grin. Note that his interview with Shelby Foote is worth the price of the book.
Favorite quote: “Charlestonian Baptists were so religious they wouldn’t fuck standing up for fear someone might think they were dancing.”
Unfortunately, many of them can’t get over the fact they lost. Refusing to call it the Civil War (they prefer “War Between the States” which it wasn’t called at the time) they revel in southern mythology which they pass along to their children in organizations like the Children of the Confederacy’s catechism. “Yankees hate children,” the kids are taught; slaves revered their masters; and the war had nothing to do with slavery, they just didn’t want the government to tell them what to do (ironic in light of southern demands that northern states enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws.)
Just to get a few things straight: 1. Nowhere in the Constitution is the right to secede mentioned; it’s in the Declaration of Independence. 2. Southern states all said in their proclamations of secession that their reason was slavery; to argue otherwise is disingenuous. 3. We could refocus the debate over slavery by redefining the issue as one about "property." Slaves were considered property. The Constitution protected property. Supreme Court decisions through 1857 consistently considered slaves to be property. The Founders wrote in many compromises in the Constitution to protect the rights of southern plantation owners (of which they could include themselves, most of them.) David Blight (Race and Reunion) has noted that slaves by 1860 were worth about $3.5 billion, an enormous sum then and of course the southern plantation owners didn't want to give up their property. The cotton business was booming and had doubled in value every decade for four decades before 1860. Ironically, one might posit that the southern states needed a strong federal government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts and it was states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who insisted on "states' rights by passing laws making enforcement of federal Fugitive Slave laws difficult. Southern states, in their declarations of secession documents, said the reason for secession was their desire to protect slavery (see South Carolina and Georgia esp., which also makes reference to slaves as property and their constitutional right thereto). Slavery and race have sullied this country for centuries; to whitewash it is rather sickening. As Bernard Malamud wrote in The Fixer: "There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil."
A constant theme is the power of symbols and nothing illustrates that more than his dispassionate recounting of the killing of Michael Westerman in Guthrie, Kentucky. Westerman was out driving in his red truck with a large rebel flag flying from the back. What the flag meant to those involved was far less important than what it meant to those who used Michael’s death as a rallying cry for their own particular agenda or hatred. Horwitz’s interviews reveal that Michael liked the battle flag simply because it matched his truck. To the kid who shot him, clearly unintentional through the side of his truck as they raced along the highway at 85 mph, it was only a symbol of the white bullies in town. Michael's glorification -- he has his own tribute website -- was not what Horwitz heard from others in town when he interviewed them. Much of the town’s reverence for the battle flag seemed to be exacerbated by the school board’s wish to change the mascot -- the Rebel, which served only to inflame teams they had to play. Ironically, Guthrie, in Todd County, Kentucky was on the Union side during the Civil War. In a further irony, Freddie Morrow who did the shooting, was sent to prison for life plus an extra four years for violating Westerman’s civil rights. More recently, the power of that symbol was demonstrated when that kid shot up the black church killing several people and calls have echoed throughout the south for and against removal of confederate symbols.
Lots of interesting stories.Horwitz writes well, with compassion, and with humor. My wife thought the book (we listened to it together) was a bit reminiscent of Bill Bryson. I agree he has the same sense of irony that has you smile except that in the case of this book that smile is followed by a quick grimace rather than a broad grin. Note that his interview with Shelby Foote is worth the price of the book.
Favorite quote: “Charlestonian Baptists were so religious they wouldn’t fuck standing up for fear someone might think they were dancing.”
September 3, 2018
"The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to take your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished - a reunited country" - Jefferson Davis
"I don't do drugs, I do the Civil War." He laughed. "Problem is, the Civil War's most addictive than crack, and almost as expensive." (14)
"I asked King if there was any way for white Southerners to honour their forebears without insulting his. He pondered this for a moment. "Remember your ancestors," he said, "but remember what they fought for too, and recognise it was wrong. Then maybe you can invite me to your Lee and Jackson birthday party. That's the deal." (44)
"Listen closely while you're down here and take a hard look at your own prejudices," Williams said, slapping me on the back as he saw me out. "We may just make an honorary cracker out of you yet." (70)
Tony Horwitz's book Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, while written in the late 1990's, is considerably contemporary in the examination of the United States, and a good one at that. With the current political climate, the argument over the true representation of the Rebel Flag, and whether or not statues of Confederate leaders and generals should be showcased in Southern communities, this book demands to be read from any side of the argument, and hopefully by the end, either side will come out with a good understanding of their own opinions and the opinions of any opposing sides, further illuminating a war that seems to continue to divide us.
Confederates in the Attic beings quite humorously and has sprinkles of comedy and odd circumstances peppered throughout. Horwitz participates with Civil War reenactors that are religiously devoted to the craft and use it as a vehicle to escape their otherwise menial jobs and lives. He travels throughout the South, visiting a variety of battle sites, communities affected by the Civil War, and meets a variety of eccentric reenactors, collectors of Confederate treasures, and historians and government officials hoping to educate the public, sometimes ironically and falsely. The commentary from these people can be either quite amusing or quite chilling depending on the point being made, but all are colourful and alone worth reading the book.
What is perhaps the most interesting sociological aspect to take away from this book is how the understanding of the Civil War can further divisions of different communities across the South and wider United States. In one chapter Horwitz travels to Kentucky where the displaying of a Rebel flag has led to the confrontation and loss of life over shooting between a group of young men of different races. As Horwitz interviews both groups we come to see their perspectives and variety of opinions, but at closer examination, Horwitz concludes that both men, while white and black and of separate ideologies, really had much more in common, and little knowledge of the history behind the flag to begin with. This is a shame considering one had to lose his life and the other sits in jail over such strong opinions. In another chapter, Horwitz visits Alabama to examine the education system of a state where both the Civil War and Civil Rights movement had their beginnings. He finds a classroom where whites and blacks go to opposite ends of the classroom and social division still reminds. The white students misconstrue what little they know of the Civil War, and the black students don't participate nor show any interest in learning about the subject, feeling it doesn't involve or represent them. This is kind of the genesis of how such divisions are sewn from an early age and can lead to the unfortunate events described in the earlier chapter on Kentucky.
Confederates in the Attic is a book, that given our current climate, demands to be acknowledged and analysed. It's illuminating, wide ranging, and full of shades of grey thinking. Written 20 years ago, Confederate in the Attic's themes still ring true today. We must look at all opinions and come up with a platform where events like the Civil War don't continue to divide us as a country.
Rating 4.5/5
"I don't do drugs, I do the Civil War." He laughed. "Problem is, the Civil War's most addictive than crack, and almost as expensive." (14)
"I asked King if there was any way for white Southerners to honour their forebears without insulting his. He pondered this for a moment. "Remember your ancestors," he said, "but remember what they fought for too, and recognise it was wrong. Then maybe you can invite me to your Lee and Jackson birthday party. That's the deal." (44)
"Listen closely while you're down here and take a hard look at your own prejudices," Williams said, slapping me on the back as he saw me out. "We may just make an honorary cracker out of you yet." (70)
Tony Horwitz's book Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, while written in the late 1990's, is considerably contemporary in the examination of the United States, and a good one at that. With the current political climate, the argument over the true representation of the Rebel Flag, and whether or not statues of Confederate leaders and generals should be showcased in Southern communities, this book demands to be read from any side of the argument, and hopefully by the end, either side will come out with a good understanding of their own opinions and the opinions of any opposing sides, further illuminating a war that seems to continue to divide us.
Confederates in the Attic beings quite humorously and has sprinkles of comedy and odd circumstances peppered throughout. Horwitz participates with Civil War reenactors that are religiously devoted to the craft and use it as a vehicle to escape their otherwise menial jobs and lives. He travels throughout the South, visiting a variety of battle sites, communities affected by the Civil War, and meets a variety of eccentric reenactors, collectors of Confederate treasures, and historians and government officials hoping to educate the public, sometimes ironically and falsely. The commentary from these people can be either quite amusing or quite chilling depending on the point being made, but all are colourful and alone worth reading the book.
What is perhaps the most interesting sociological aspect to take away from this book is how the understanding of the Civil War can further divisions of different communities across the South and wider United States. In one chapter Horwitz travels to Kentucky where the displaying of a Rebel flag has led to the confrontation and loss of life over shooting between a group of young men of different races. As Horwitz interviews both groups we come to see their perspectives and variety of opinions, but at closer examination, Horwitz concludes that both men, while white and black and of separate ideologies, really had much more in common, and little knowledge of the history behind the flag to begin with. This is a shame considering one had to lose his life and the other sits in jail over such strong opinions. In another chapter, Horwitz visits Alabama to examine the education system of a state where both the Civil War and Civil Rights movement had their beginnings. He finds a classroom where whites and blacks go to opposite ends of the classroom and social division still reminds. The white students misconstrue what little they know of the Civil War, and the black students don't participate nor show any interest in learning about the subject, feeling it doesn't involve or represent them. This is kind of the genesis of how such divisions are sewn from an early age and can lead to the unfortunate events described in the earlier chapter on Kentucky.
Confederates in the Attic is a book, that given our current climate, demands to be acknowledged and analysed. It's illuminating, wide ranging, and full of shades of grey thinking. Written 20 years ago, Confederate in the Attic's themes still ring true today. We must look at all opinions and come up with a platform where events like the Civil War don't continue to divide us as a country.
Rating 4.5/5
May 31, 2020
Before the age of 10 I took annual trips with my family to Arkansas to visit my maternal grandparents. The interstate system had yet to be completed so much of our travel was on two lane roads that put us directly in contact with the people and the land. I vividly recall ascending into low mountains along with a descent into poverty as we made our way from Chicago through Missouri and into northwestern Arkansas. Some of the dwellings at roadside were hardly shacks. How could people live on so little and what did they do for a living?
In Arkansas I found the novelty of whites and blacks living in the same neighborhood, far different from my own community in Illinois. Life was slow, the air was thick with humidity, packs of dogs ran around loose and nature dominated with huge trees and flowering everything. The smell of the air at night was fantastic and is lodged in my memory with the whistle and deep throb of a slow moving freight passing each night long after dark as I lay ever so slowly cooling off on a cot placed on a screened in porch. I attended elementary school in Arkansas one year and was advanced a grade because of the level of schooling I had reached in Illinois. It was a land left behind.
But of the Civil War there was scarcely a mention and I don't remember any Confederate flags being flown.
The South of the 1950's was a different world that I anticipated visiting each summer, a place where it is understandable that people would see themselves as different from Northerners, yet the identification with the Confederacy was nothing to what it has become. Even at the worst times of the Civil Rights Movement, though racism was openly on display and states rights were always mentioned, the glorification of the Confederacy was absent. The South had lost.
As a child I was unaware of the surge in Confederaphilia that saw the erection of war monuments in the South in the early 20th century decades after the Civil War ended. Nor could I foresee the angry defiance of individuals who would link gun possession and reverence for the Old South in a repudiation of government in general that we see today.
Tony Horwitz, 8 years younger than me, spent a childhood fascinated with the Confederate side in the Civil War to the point of painting the unfinished rafters of the family attic with his youthful interpretations of famous battles. In the 1990's as a writer he made the decision, fortunate for all of us, to tour the South looking for an explanation of the identification of modern Southerners with the Confederacy in the process gaining insight on his own infatuation.
This marvelous book written by a humanitarian goes the distance from camp-outs with hard core Civil War re-enacters to witnessing the trial of a black youth charged with the murder of a white man for the crime of driving a pickup flying the stars and bars, the well known battle flag of the Confederacy. With a keen ear he avidly records the thoughts of blacks and whites, of the ignorant and the educated, of museum curators and teachers, motel owners and barflies. He encounters rage and indifference, racism and intolerance, thoughtful analysis and a threat to his life.
Seeking and giving perspective throughout, Horwitz provides background detail on the locations he visits and the personalities of Civil War generals that are revered with statuary today. He is able to keep his cool with one exception. If you love to satisfy your curiosity like I do, you'll find the author's information is good enough to get you online to the exact locations he mentions. Yes that memorial that was being debated still stands today. Yes, that Confederate Parrott gun that a citizen discovered barely evident in a private garden is on display as mentioned. But even at the time Horwitz made his journey, he was seeing the relentless retreat of historic sites before sprawl.
Horwitz discovers devout fans of the Confederacy in Kentucky, a state that went with the Union. He finds people fondly recalling events that never happened or that happened in a contradictory way. Above all he finds people simply going from day to day doing often meaningless work to support themselves and usually living in the here today, gone tomorrow environment of strip malls and fast food outlets that provide no meaning to life.
Everyone needs an identity. Americans live in a culture that promotes individuality beyond all else, deeply established or taken from whatever is at hand if not. If you are a waiter in a restaurant you are one in a million. If in your time off you can clothe yourself in authentic Civil War attire and deprive yourself of every comfort in claimed sympathy for the rebels of 1862, you become somebody, one of a few. If you live where nothing significant ever happens, where boredom is only broken by effortless entertainment, it makes sense to seek out battlefields nearby that proclaim eternal significance for thousands of nameless dead that can add to yours by association.
Things have not improved since Horwitz wrote this masterpiece 22 years ago, but reading it will reveal the deep need we all have to amount to something not only in our own eyes but through association with others who support with us the things valued. Time and again the author finds people praising the straightforward way life was once lived, the deep commitments, the sense of unity even in a South that voted for disunion. Confederates in the Attic is a profoundly American work that tells us where our material culture, not just that of the South, is failing us as we look back in history not just for greatness as a people but for personal salvation.
Tony Horwitz died at 60 in 2019 of an apparent heart attack, a great loss.
In Arkansas I found the novelty of whites and blacks living in the same neighborhood, far different from my own community in Illinois. Life was slow, the air was thick with humidity, packs of dogs ran around loose and nature dominated with huge trees and flowering everything. The smell of the air at night was fantastic and is lodged in my memory with the whistle and deep throb of a slow moving freight passing each night long after dark as I lay ever so slowly cooling off on a cot placed on a screened in porch. I attended elementary school in Arkansas one year and was advanced a grade because of the level of schooling I had reached in Illinois. It was a land left behind.
But of the Civil War there was scarcely a mention and I don't remember any Confederate flags being flown.
The South of the 1950's was a different world that I anticipated visiting each summer, a place where it is understandable that people would see themselves as different from Northerners, yet the identification with the Confederacy was nothing to what it has become. Even at the worst times of the Civil Rights Movement, though racism was openly on display and states rights were always mentioned, the glorification of the Confederacy was absent. The South had lost.
As a child I was unaware of the surge in Confederaphilia that saw the erection of war monuments in the South in the early 20th century decades after the Civil War ended. Nor could I foresee the angry defiance of individuals who would link gun possession and reverence for the Old South in a repudiation of government in general that we see today.
Tony Horwitz, 8 years younger than me, spent a childhood fascinated with the Confederate side in the Civil War to the point of painting the unfinished rafters of the family attic with his youthful interpretations of famous battles. In the 1990's as a writer he made the decision, fortunate for all of us, to tour the South looking for an explanation of the identification of modern Southerners with the Confederacy in the process gaining insight on his own infatuation.
This marvelous book written by a humanitarian goes the distance from camp-outs with hard core Civil War re-enacters to witnessing the trial of a black youth charged with the murder of a white man for the crime of driving a pickup flying the stars and bars, the well known battle flag of the Confederacy. With a keen ear he avidly records the thoughts of blacks and whites, of the ignorant and the educated, of museum curators and teachers, motel owners and barflies. He encounters rage and indifference, racism and intolerance, thoughtful analysis and a threat to his life.
Seeking and giving perspective throughout, Horwitz provides background detail on the locations he visits and the personalities of Civil War generals that are revered with statuary today. He is able to keep his cool with one exception. If you love to satisfy your curiosity like I do, you'll find the author's information is good enough to get you online to the exact locations he mentions. Yes that memorial that was being debated still stands today. Yes, that Confederate Parrott gun that a citizen discovered barely evident in a private garden is on display as mentioned. But even at the time Horwitz made his journey, he was seeing the relentless retreat of historic sites before sprawl.
Horwitz discovers devout fans of the Confederacy in Kentucky, a state that went with the Union. He finds people fondly recalling events that never happened or that happened in a contradictory way. Above all he finds people simply going from day to day doing often meaningless work to support themselves and usually living in the here today, gone tomorrow environment of strip malls and fast food outlets that provide no meaning to life.
Everyone needs an identity. Americans live in a culture that promotes individuality beyond all else, deeply established or taken from whatever is at hand if not. If you are a waiter in a restaurant you are one in a million. If in your time off you can clothe yourself in authentic Civil War attire and deprive yourself of every comfort in claimed sympathy for the rebels of 1862, you become somebody, one of a few. If you live where nothing significant ever happens, where boredom is only broken by effortless entertainment, it makes sense to seek out battlefields nearby that proclaim eternal significance for thousands of nameless dead that can add to yours by association.
Things have not improved since Horwitz wrote this masterpiece 22 years ago, but reading it will reveal the deep need we all have to amount to something not only in our own eyes but through association with others who support with us the things valued. Time and again the author finds people praising the straightforward way life was once lived, the deep commitments, the sense of unity even in a South that voted for disunion. Confederates in the Attic is a profoundly American work that tells us where our material culture, not just that of the South, is failing us as we look back in history not just for greatness as a people but for personal salvation.
Tony Horwitz died at 60 in 2019 of an apparent heart attack, a great loss.
March 24, 2017
I enjoyed rereading this story of Tony Horwitz's trip through the South--and to Gettysburg, PA. It's a fascinating travelogue which shows how "the Lost Cause" lives on in the South. Sometimes it's humorous, sometimes disturbing. He certainly met some real characters. I have to say that I first read the book in 2000, not long after it came out. After reading the book, I, along with my two brothers, did my own trips into the South and visited many of the battlefields which he writes about, such as Manassas/Bull Run, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, and so on --and some he didn't visit! It is a great way to see the country and learn more about our society and culture (s) along the way.
July 25, 2015
If you read my reviews, by now you will see they frequently have an anti-southern tinge to them. This one won't disappoint either. This was a well researched book that takes readers through modern day civil war sites, cities, forts and battlegrounds. The title doesn't quite fit the book; however,mainly because the main theme is not so much these southerners who want to fight the war all over again but how the history of this time period is reinvented to fit people's philosophies. For the South in general it is a war that still resonates. It was not difficult for Horwitz to find neo-confederates who curse yankee scum, support segregation and reminisce about the "good old days" of before the northern assailants stole their "freedoms" and told them how to "live their lives". Readers should figure out on their own what those phrases mean, but a search for these people doesn't make for a good challenge or a book for that matter.
It is very clear that starting in the early 20th century when most of the veterans from that war were dying off, the south began turning the conflict into a mythical tale of southern glory. That is when the majority of the monuments went up and racial hatred took another turn for the worse.
The war itself is used to continue to polarize the nation even more than it did in the late 19th century. There are plenty of stories of veterans from both sides participating together in memorial, marches, and reenactments with grace. Sadly their kids and grandkids can't bury the hatchet.
Two more points: there are more Nathan Bedford Forrest monuments than all other confederate leaders combined as well as his modern day merchandise out sells Lee's 5 to 1. Considering that Lee was flawed but still a "southern gentleman" and Forrest founded the KKK and was responsible for the slaughter of unarmed black soldiers at Fort Pillow, this shows how southerners took the most extreme and most hateful legacy to carry forward. They will dig in their heals against change if he is their hero from the war.
Modern southerners all through the book used the language and somtimes exact quotes of the Civil Rights Movement to champion their cause. They say "change is gonna come" and "free at last" concerning liberal and northern oppression (no one can articulately explain what rights have been stolen). 13,000 northern soldiers died at Andersonville prison camp in Georgia in two years. The head of the camp Henry Wirz has an annual memorial service in the town and is viewed as a martyr because he was hung after the war for war crimes. That's insane.
It is very clear that starting in the early 20th century when most of the veterans from that war were dying off, the south began turning the conflict into a mythical tale of southern glory. That is when the majority of the monuments went up and racial hatred took another turn for the worse.
The war itself is used to continue to polarize the nation even more than it did in the late 19th century. There are plenty of stories of veterans from both sides participating together in memorial, marches, and reenactments with grace. Sadly their kids and grandkids can't bury the hatchet.
Two more points: there are more Nathan Bedford Forrest monuments than all other confederate leaders combined as well as his modern day merchandise out sells Lee's 5 to 1. Considering that Lee was flawed but still a "southern gentleman" and Forrest founded the KKK and was responsible for the slaughter of unarmed black soldiers at Fort Pillow, this shows how southerners took the most extreme and most hateful legacy to carry forward. They will dig in their heals against change if he is their hero from the war.
Modern southerners all through the book used the language and somtimes exact quotes of the Civil Rights Movement to champion their cause. They say "change is gonna come" and "free at last" concerning liberal and northern oppression (no one can articulately explain what rights have been stolen). 13,000 northern soldiers died at Andersonville prison camp in Georgia in two years. The head of the camp Henry Wirz has an annual memorial service in the town and is viewed as a martyr because he was hung after the war for war crimes. That's insane.
February 17, 2015
A couple of years ago, I became convinced of the fact that people who grew up on the East Coast and in the Deep South areas of the United States have knowledge of and an affinity for the Civil War that the rest of us just don't have. I didn't appreciate just how much the Civil War is woven into people's lives back here. There are memorials and plaques in seemingly every town commemorating a small skirmish that occurred nearby. Families visit major Civil War battlefields on the weekends.
Me? I'd heard of most the Civil War battlefields, memorized (and then quickly forgot) most of the Gettysburg Address in junior high, and knew that Lee surrendered on April 9 because it was my brother's birthday. Upon moving east, I could not get over the amount of general knowledge folks had about the war. It was only upon seeing all of the exits for battlefields and memorials that I realized exactly why this was.
This book provided a lot of information to confirm my hypothesis, but also provided additional insight into why many Southerners in particular seem to still be stuck on the Civil War.
Confederates in the Attic combines equal parts history and travel writing in a very Bill Bryson-esque way. The book was well-written and never dull. I read it quickly, but it didn't feel insubstantial. On the contrary, Horwitz spends a fair portion of the book trying to come to terms some of the hard questions that come to the surface when grappling with Southern remembrance of the Civil War. Should the Confederacy be memorialized at all? If it is memorialized, can it be done in a way that isn't inflammatory? How do such remembrances deal with issues of slavery and race? I appreciated the fact that Horwitz made no grand pronouncements on any of these subjects and instead treated them in a very thoughtful way. I felt like I was watching someone trying to untangle a enormous ball of yarn. He may have loosened a few knots, but the bulk is still hopelessly tangled. As someone who has no idea how to sort through many of these issues myself, I found his approach appealing. It felt honest.
Other highlights include a look at hardcore Civil War reenactors, a hypothesis of why women in the South have been especially enamored with Confederacy remembrance (It provided Southern women with their first taste of autonomy - someone had to run the households while the men were off fighting the war), and the Civil Wargasm (How great is this pun? Just read the book already!).
Me? I'd heard of most the Civil War battlefields, memorized (and then quickly forgot) most of the Gettysburg Address in junior high, and knew that Lee surrendered on April 9 because it was my brother's birthday. Upon moving east, I could not get over the amount of general knowledge folks had about the war. It was only upon seeing all of the exits for battlefields and memorials that I realized exactly why this was.
This book provided a lot of information to confirm my hypothesis, but also provided additional insight into why many Southerners in particular seem to still be stuck on the Civil War.
Confederates in the Attic combines equal parts history and travel writing in a very Bill Bryson-esque way. The book was well-written and never dull. I read it quickly, but it didn't feel insubstantial. On the contrary, Horwitz spends a fair portion of the book trying to come to terms some of the hard questions that come to the surface when grappling with Southern remembrance of the Civil War. Should the Confederacy be memorialized at all? If it is memorialized, can it be done in a way that isn't inflammatory? How do such remembrances deal with issues of slavery and race? I appreciated the fact that Horwitz made no grand pronouncements on any of these subjects and instead treated them in a very thoughtful way. I felt like I was watching someone trying to untangle a enormous ball of yarn. He may have loosened a few knots, but the bulk is still hopelessly tangled. As someone who has no idea how to sort through many of these issues myself, I found his approach appealing. It felt honest.
Other highlights include a look at hardcore Civil War reenactors, a hypothesis of why women in the South have been especially enamored with Confederacy remembrance (It provided Southern women with their first taste of autonomy - someone had to run the households while the men were off fighting the war), and the Civil Wargasm (How great is this pun? Just read the book already!).
October 22, 2007
I read this while on vacation in Arkansas a few years ago. This is one of those books I finished and then went around for a month or two literally shaking people, while frothing at the mouth and screaming in their faces: "YOU HAVE TO @#$&ING READ THIS! HA HA HAH HAH!"
Then I completely forgot it existed. But, that has more to do with me than with this book, which is great, and still highly recommended. It's about the meaning and legacy of the Civil War, and about the South today, and, of course, about Civil War reenactors.... Embarrassingly enough, for a casualty of the California school system like myself who never learned any basic history at all this book did some belated and necessary Civil-War-for-Dummies work, and did it in a hilariously entertaining (or at some points, e.g., the Antietam trip, seriously moving) fashion. Horowitz sets up such a fun and absurd context with his reenactors, that he's able to blindside you with the magnitude and horror of events our country doesn't ever seem to have processed in a very normal way. Of course, it's hard to say what this "normal" processing would look like even in theory, but this book shows us how the abnormal, actual version looks, on the ground. It looks bizarre, but also makes a certain kind of sense, and makes for excellent reading.
Then I completely forgot it existed. But, that has more to do with me than with this book, which is great, and still highly recommended. It's about the meaning and legacy of the Civil War, and about the South today, and, of course, about Civil War reenactors.... Embarrassingly enough, for a casualty of the California school system like myself who never learned any basic history at all this book did some belated and necessary Civil-War-for-Dummies work, and did it in a hilariously entertaining (or at some points, e.g., the Antietam trip, seriously moving) fashion. Horowitz sets up such a fun and absurd context with his reenactors, that he's able to blindside you with the magnitude and horror of events our country doesn't ever seem to have processed in a very normal way. Of course, it's hard to say what this "normal" processing would look like even in theory, but this book shows us how the abnormal, actual version looks, on the ground. It looks bizarre, but also makes a certain kind of sense, and makes for excellent reading.
May 19, 2009
If he weren't such a good writer I probably would have put this down because he's a bit off-base about how hung up people in the South are with the War.
After winning a Pulitzer for his journalism covering the wars in Bosnia and the Gulf, he returned home to seek out the stories of the war fought on this country's soil.
I think the problem he has is one of selection bias. If you only travel to places in the south where major battles happened, and you go to meetings of Sons of Confederate Veterans you'll find people who care a lot about the "Lost Cause". While I see his point, I think these people are largely the minority. Granted, there's plenty of Red State vigor throughout the poor southern states, and some of that equates with sentiments of the Confederacy, but I don't think it's reach is quite as far and as deep as he makes it out to be.
Still an interesting read. My favorite parts where his personal accounts of following along with a group of "Hardcore" re-enactors who ate hardtack and slept in the cold and dealt with chiggers and lice just to experience it the way their ancestors did.
After winning a Pulitzer for his journalism covering the wars in Bosnia and the Gulf, he returned home to seek out the stories of the war fought on this country's soil.
I think the problem he has is one of selection bias. If you only travel to places in the south where major battles happened, and you go to meetings of Sons of Confederate Veterans you'll find people who care a lot about the "Lost Cause". While I see his point, I think these people are largely the minority. Granted, there's plenty of Red State vigor throughout the poor southern states, and some of that equates with sentiments of the Confederacy, but I don't think it's reach is quite as far and as deep as he makes it out to be.
Still an interesting read. My favorite parts where his personal accounts of following along with a group of "Hardcore" re-enactors who ate hardtack and slept in the cold and dealt with chiggers and lice just to experience it the way their ancestors did.
January 7, 2008
A good read, if one believes (or wants to believe) that Southern boogeymen, dressed in woolen uniforms, their archaic muskets gleaming in the sun, are waiting to launch a second "War for Southern Independence" against the sacred Union.
O.K., maybe that's a bit extreme. But I think Horowitz treats the South the way travel writer Horace Kephart once treated Southern Appalachian mountaineers -- as a peculiar race of people, consumed by some sort of divine madness that sets them at odds with "mainstream," "Progressive," and hence "good" America.
Are there extremists in the South? Sure. But to deliberately seek out the most extreme members of a society, and then hold them up as representative of an entire population (in a book subtitled "Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War," no less) is more than a bit irresponsible.
No matter. I still enjoyed reading it, and would recommend it (with some reservations).
O.K., maybe that's a bit extreme. But I think Horowitz treats the South the way travel writer Horace Kephart once treated Southern Appalachian mountaineers -- as a peculiar race of people, consumed by some sort of divine madness that sets them at odds with "mainstream," "Progressive," and hence "good" America.
Are there extremists in the South? Sure. But to deliberately seek out the most extreme members of a society, and then hold them up as representative of an entire population (in a book subtitled "Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War," no less) is more than a bit irresponsible.
No matter. I still enjoyed reading it, and would recommend it (with some reservations).
November 29, 2009
I don't know if I can offer much on this book after all that has been said below in the other reviews. Being from Austrlia which is some distance from the United States and with no background in the Civil War (other than reading great history books) I found this a very interesting book. At times I was amazed and saddened and I wondered was America really like this. I think the book offers you something about your country that you can be proud of but also maybe a bit scared of as well. A very interesting travel, well worth the time to read.
October 1, 2018
This actually is rather enlightening. Makes a good book for teaching because of the use of viewpoint and history.
July 24, 2011
This was a good read and unlike the typical books I normally read (Military history and adventure). This book is about a war correspondent that returns to the USA after living 11 years abroad. During the years he traveled abroad, events such as the Ken Burns PBS series had rekindled an interest in the Civil War. Horwitz own interest lay dormant since high school (he used to draw murals of Rebels in his attic). Why would Horwitz, a self-confessed liberal Jew be a Rebel sympathizer? It seems after Horwitz’s travels to the South to attend Save the Flag rallies, visit the Son’s and Daughters of the Confederacy, white supremacists, and after reenacting with a hard core rebel unit Horwitz decides his heart is with the Union after all. At first I thought that Horwitz painted a negative picture of whites in the south and made blacks look overly pious. Often during interviews he gave blacks a free pass. For example, why would it matter if the man shot in the head may have waved a rebel battle flag and yelled “Nigger?” Is this a good reason to kill someone? Does this matter? But I will say that in the final chapter the author makes up for his bias by visiting a school for blacks in Alabama and some civil rights commemorators there. He determines these blacks are just as bad as the wacko red necks he has so often interviewed. The best part of the book are his dealings with Rob the hard core reenactor. The Civil-wargasm was outstanding. I laughed my tail off. There were also many good tidbits passed on about the civil war. A good read for a civil war buff or the casual reader.
January 20, 2009
Robert Lee Hodge is the Marlon Brando of Confederate reenactors. He can swell his belly, fall to the ground, hand curled, cheeks puffed out, mouth contorted in a mask of pain and play dead. It’s what he does. And, he says, it’s a great ice-breaker. Interesting as this may be, I am not sure I would follow the author’s lead and spend nights ‘spooning’ with this guy.
Some people spend a year reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, or living Biblically. Tony Horwitz, a New England Jew spent a year traversing the Confederate states seeking living history, myth, culture, prejudice, pride and anything else that came along from people who consider the past one hundred and thirty years as an intermission in the war of succession.
And he found it. Most of what he writes is fairly predictable. If you are scrapping the bottom of the Southern barrel you are bound to come up with eccentric characters. The book is full of them. There is also a sense of sadness in the tone—not just because so much time is spent traipsing and reflecting Civil War cemeteries. Unlike one of Sarah Vowell’s road trips there doesn’t seem to be any joy in the subject matter. The book is very readable and parts fascinating. Like the war, I was glad when it came to an end.
Some people spend a year reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, or living Biblically. Tony Horwitz, a New England Jew spent a year traversing the Confederate states seeking living history, myth, culture, prejudice, pride and anything else that came along from people who consider the past one hundred and thirty years as an intermission in the war of succession.
And he found it. Most of what he writes is fairly predictable. If you are scrapping the bottom of the Southern barrel you are bound to come up with eccentric characters. The book is full of them. There is also a sense of sadness in the tone—not just because so much time is spent traipsing and reflecting Civil War cemeteries. Unlike one of Sarah Vowell’s road trips there doesn’t seem to be any joy in the subject matter. The book is very readable and parts fascinating. Like the war, I was glad when it came to an end.
February 22, 2013
This book is a hoax. If you are not from the South and even mildly curious in a Southerner's viewpoint of the civil war, run from this book. Sadly, and regretfully I wasted .50 cents on this garbage at a friends of the library fundraising book store. I mean the authors last name should have clued me in on the fact that this dweeb would have zero knowledge on the southern way of life, much less being from Connecticut. I'll cut to the chase of this "work" and spoil the plot. All southerners are stupid, racist bigots that live in trailer parks and generally consist of Jerry Springer show type guests who all are involved in secret civil war societies that occasionally reenact the war between the states. Save yourself time and consider it read at that. I'll pass on this light on his loafers, half man author's other novels.
November 7, 2014
One of my least favorite books from the last several years. There is plenty of interesting material as the author travels the South and looks at how people see the War Between the States, but the author's slant makes the whole affair distasteful. I'm liberal, but the liberal bias in this book is too much for me. For example, a young black criminal who has murdered a white man gets gentle, sympathetic treatment from Horwitz, but a white parent who comments on the race of a black tour guide gets contempt. She was happy that her kids got a person of color for their tour guide, but Horwitz detected her underlying racism and makes her look foolish. So blacks killing whites is OK, but whites commenting on race is shameful. Too self-serving. Can't trust the author to be honest. But if you like this sort of slant, you'll eat it up.
March 21, 2012
As a non-Southern children of Eastern European immigrants, I have always wondered about the peculiar passion that so many people in the former Confederate States of America feel about the Civil War. Except, they never call it that: It's either the War Between the States (never was no Federal gummint involved, nohow) or the War of the Southern Confederacy (who were they fighting, phantoms?). Whatever that passion it, is certainly has crossed over into our politics, where so many intransigent lines in the sand are drawn.
I sense that many Anglo-Saxon whites in the South feel disinherited and scorned. Their reaction is to strike out against the scoffers (or imagined scoffers), even if it means imposing their own religious and social agenda on the nation as a whole. I rather suspect that many people in the Northeast, the Midwest, and West look upon these doings with a sort of scorn tinged with fear. What if these redneck peckerwoods have their way and assume control of our government?
Tony Horwitz took two years out of his life to tour the old Confederacy and ask questions about the rebel battle flag; the rebel triumvirate of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest; how blacks viewed the war; and other related subjects. He talked to educators, museum curators, heads of various patriotic organizations extolling the antebellum South, and even Civil War reenactors. In fact, the book's paperback cover sports an authentic-looking photo of one of the most "hardcore" re-enactors, one Robert Lee Hodge, with whom Horwitz spent many weeks. He is one of the most memorable characters in Confederates in the Attic.
In the end, much of the secessionist fervor in the South has partaken of a typically American culture of permanent outrage. Flying the rebel battle flag from your wheels and pointing it out menacingly to Afro-Americans is a cheap way to pretend one is worth more than one is entitled to. All the more if you're stuck in a dead-end job and feel that others are being promoted over you while you are passed over and regarded as a troublemaker. In the end, Horwitz concludes by quoting Robert Penn Warren:
I sense that many Anglo-Saxon whites in the South feel disinherited and scorned. Their reaction is to strike out against the scoffers (or imagined scoffers), even if it means imposing their own religious and social agenda on the nation as a whole. I rather suspect that many people in the Northeast, the Midwest, and West look upon these doings with a sort of scorn tinged with fear. What if these redneck peckerwoods have their way and assume control of our government?
Tony Horwitz took two years out of his life to tour the old Confederacy and ask questions about the rebel battle flag; the rebel triumvirate of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest; how blacks viewed the war; and other related subjects. He talked to educators, museum curators, heads of various patriotic organizations extolling the antebellum South, and even Civil War reenactors. In fact, the book's paperback cover sports an authentic-looking photo of one of the most "hardcore" re-enactors, one Robert Lee Hodge, with whom Horwitz spent many weeks. He is one of the most memorable characters in Confederates in the Attic.
In the end, much of the secessionist fervor in the South has partaken of a typically American culture of permanent outrage. Flying the rebel battle flag from your wheels and pointing it out menacingly to Afro-Americans is a cheap way to pretend one is worth more than one is entitled to. All the more if you're stuck in a dead-end job and feel that others are being promoted over you while you are passed over and regarded as a troublemaker. In the end, Horwitz concludes by quoting Robert Penn Warren:
A high proportion of our population was not even in this country when the War was being fought. Not that this disqualifies the grandchildren from experiencing to the full the imaginative appeal of the Civil War. To experience this appeal may be, in fact, the very ritual of being American.I like that. Let's face it: Being American is not a simple thing. Here I live in Los Angeles, a city with a majority Hispanic population, reveling in my Hungarian background and attending all the local Magyar events and eating the sacramental Eastern European food. If I lived in Mississippi, a descendant of Reb soldiers, and felt irked at being thought of as an ignorant hayseed, it would be an altogether different existence. Books like Horwitz's help in reconciling the many diverse threads that make up the Ame5rican people.
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