Shelby Foote
Shelby Foote
Shelby Dade Foote Jr. was an American writer and journalist. Although he primarily viewed himself as a novelist, he is now best known for his authorship of The Civil War: A Narrative, a three-volume history of the American Civil War.
"I think what Churchill said about the Civil War was correct: It was the last great romantic war and the first horrendous modern war. It fascinates us because it is still the central event of our history. So many of the questions that still plague us, particularly concerning race relations and the size and power of central government, can be better understood if we see how they arose and how we attempted to solve them."
"Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvement in European wars, beginning with the First World War, did what it did. But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. And it is very necessary, if you are going to understand the American character in the twentieth century, to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the mid-nineteenth century. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads."
"Before the war, it was said the United States are - grammatically it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. And after the war it was always the United States is, as we say today without being self-conscious at all. And that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an is."
"When I was a hardworking, pistol-hot writer, I was unknown. Now that I’m a tired old man, they start hollerin’ how good I am. I’m not going to analyze what that all means. I’m just determined not to let it turn my life into something I don’t want it to be."
"Right now Im thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery. Another was emancipation. Its a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy-and it was. But the way it was done led to tragedy. Turning four million people loose with no jobs or trades or learning. And then, in 1877, for a few electoral votes, just abandoning them entirely. A huge amount of pain and trouble resulted. Everybody in America is still paying for it."
"A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. The library is the university."
