Shelby Foote 25 years later
verges on offensive.
Barbara Fields on the other hand is positively prescient.
Really. I can't wait to hear why. The man wrote the definitive book on the Civil War and I love to hear him talk about it. He was by far the best speaker they interviewed for the series. I could listen to him read the phone book.
As for Fields, I agree with her assessment that slavery was the root cause of the war but I was always a little bothered by her comment (paraphrasing here) that she really wasn't interested in the battles or war tactics other than the fact that armies and men with guns had finally taken up a higher cause. Or something to that effect. It came off pretty dismissive and obtuse. Those battles were pretty important to the 600,000 people who died in them. Just always struck me as a crappy thing to say. Maybe I just took it the wrong way.
Well he did have an inherent bias in how he spoke. He never really praised anything the Union did, and he spoke so cheerfully of everything the South did.
Man this party is like an orgy at a campsite......its ***king in tents.
I disagree. While I have not reAd his civil war narrative, I have read that he did not incorporate lost "lost cause" beliefs in that narrative. also when talking about Fredericksburg he says he knows of no braver troops than the Union troops that charges maryes heights.
shareI think it's an easy out to say he praised all the south did because he is southern, and speaks with that wonderful southern drawl.
shareI never said any of that. If you can't hear his obvious bias then thats your problem. Just look at the way he describes battles and pictures. The choice of adjectives he uses.
Man this party is like an orgy at a campsite......its ***king in tents.
Pity they were commanded by.Burnside!
shareMister Foote speaks so highly of Lincoln and Grant that many Southerners are offended. Foote opines that the War produced two geniuses: Forrest and Lincoln.
Foote also points out how Grant outgeneraled Lee. As pointed out in an earlier post, Foote is of the opinion that there were no braver soldiers than the Federal troops at Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Foot also dispels the notion that one rebel soldier was worth ten Yankee hirelings. As Foote put it: not by a long shot.
So I have to wonder at your bald statement: He never really praised anything the Union did, and he spoke so cheerfully of everything the South did.
It is obvious you either did not watch the Series or you watched it with a bias.
As to Barbara Fields, her dismissive comment about the battles is low, especially for a professional historian.
I've posted elsewhere that I'm an Englishman with very limited knowledge of the Civil War. Despite the fact that even I could tell that the Mason Dixon line lay far to the north of Mr Shelby's home it I certainly couldn't see any bias, on the contrary I found him to be a most informative, even-handed and entertaining expert.
share