The Jump Blog

Several hours ago I was making preparations for my parents arrival tommorrow when Mrs. Falcon tapped on the door frame.
“Did you hear?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
“Shelby Foote died.”

Well now. What to say of Mr. Foote? He was most widely known for his appearance in Ken Burns epic documentary “The Civil War”. He was included in that documentary for two reasons: he had written the definitive three volume history of the American Civil War, and he was incredibly engaging on camera. His unabashed Southern-ness poured out of television screens onto millions of living room floors all across America. People loved him instantly. I myself was instantly taken with the thought that one didn’t have to cover a Southern accent to seem intelligent.

Over the years I began to read things he had written and found that his easy verbal storytelling extended to his prose as well. He is known as an historian who could write, or a writer who knew history, depending on which profession is consulted. I think either works fine as long as we remember that the man was a writer, and a damned fine one, unafraid to work a sentence to a frazzle:

“Their uniforms, which had darklened in the rain, began to steam in the April heat, and where formerly they had slogged through the mud, keeping their eyes down on the boots or the haversack of the man ahead, now they began to look around and even dance aside with little prancing steps to avoid the wet places.”

His history was literature and vice versa. Even more the man was a Democrat that I could have spent days talking to, and who displayed pluck, common sense, and grit, as he demonstrated in this interview with the American Enterprise Institute:

FOOTE: Fanatics we couldn’t do without, but God knows they make a lot of trouble. I can no longer engage in any conversation about the Confederate flag, because you’ve got the black fanatics on one end and redneck yahoos on the other. We people in between—who, I suspect probably are a minority—can’t be heard for the racket. So I stay out of that fuss, except to say that I’m for the Confederate flag flying anywhere anybody wants to fly it at any time. If they have a referendum in a state that says “Take the flag down off the state capitol,” I think they ought to take the flag down. But the flag to me represents many noble things. It is strange to me how they can single out the Confederate flag and not have any objections to, say, the Japanese flag and the march on Bataan.

There seems to be no understanding that the Civil War was really an argument between one form of society and another form of society. There’s no way I can get people to see that the soldiers were not much concerned about slavery on either side.

FOOTE: It was certainly a tragedy for the South. I’m going down to Greenville tomorrow, and it breaks my heart to go down there: The subtraction of the blacks has changed society entirely. It’s not as leisurely as it was; it lacks the grace that it had.

I speak the way I do because my nurse taught me how to talk. Now, the influence of mass communication has modified accents all over the place.

TAE: After the Civil War, a compromise was obtained in which the North acknowledged the bravery of the Southern soldiers and the valor with which they fought for a cause in which they believed, while the South acknowledged that maybe it was for the best that the Union was preserved. Has this compromise finally broken down?

FOOTE: It has. Senator Moseley-Braun (D-Il.) persuaded her fellow Senators to disallow the use of the Confederate symbol on the Daughters of the Confederacy stationery in Alexandria. It wasn’t a Confederate battle flag; it was just a Confederate symbol. Well, that’s disruptive of the compromise, which really worked to a considerable extent.

’m a yellow-dog Democrat, a true believer in everything that the Democratic Party stands for. I still admire Franklin Roosevelt tremendously for saving us from fascism or communism. I’m inclined to think the government can solve all problems; I have found out that that’s a long way from true. The central government does a very bad job if you turn education over to them: You wind up either with a bunch of academics who think they have the answer to everything or politicians who will do things for political reasons, and it’s a bad scene.

I have found out over the last 50 years that the government can create as many problems as it solves, but I’m still a good, solid Democrat. One thing I admire about the Republicans greatly is their intense concern for the individual as opposed to the state. They’re always out to protect the individual.

He was an incredibly straight-shooter, and conservatives will find many things with which to disagree, but I suspect less than liberals, who tend to shrink from his unflinching honesty. I celebrate men like Foote: self made, unapologetic, patriotic, and fascinating.

We lost a good one today.

CPT Shelby Foote
5th ID, 50th FA, ETO

GOP Vixen is also talking about this
As is Mark Cross

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