CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC

Twenty years ago, in the mid-1990's, journalist Tony Horowitz made a trek through the South to discover why Southerners are still so obsessed by the Civil War (or the Late Unpleasantness With the North, or the War Between the States, or the War Against Yankee Aggression).

As you would expect, Tony wound up talking to every eccentric and nut job in every town he visited. He talks to fanatical neo-Confederates who are ready to continue the war and militant radical black activists who want to tear down every Confederate memorial and denounce Robert E. Lee as a "criminal."  Horowitz came in for several close calls in a couple of biker bars he visited.  It was also very amusing every time one of his subjects began to cuss "The Jews,"  Sometimes the Jewish Horowitz would let it go and other times he would say, "I'm Jewish."  One neo-Confederate responded, "Then you know what I'm talking about."

He found the real last Confederate widow, living in rural South Alabama, who was briefly married to an elderly veteran in the 1920s when she was a teenager.  I was fascinated that she said that he was so old "I called him Mr. Martin, even in bed."  Although Heritage groups had pumped up old man Martin's service record to make him a hero of the Army of Northern Virginia, Horwitz hired a researcher to comb through the archives and find out the truth.  Martin was drafted as a teenager in 1864 and sent to Virginia.  Hospitalized for the Measles, Martin just left and went back home to Alabama.  The regimental rolls listed him as a deserter for the rest of the war.  Martin's brother, who was also drafted at the same time was killed.

Robert Lee Hodge

Everybody's favorite character is "hardcore" reenactor Robert Lee Hodge. (They don't like to be called reenactors, they prefer the term "Living Historians").    Hodge wants everything to be period perfect and criticizes reenactors who he doesn't think are true to the Civil War period. (Anything that is out of sinc with the mid-19th century is "Farb").  With Hodge dressed as a ragged Confederate and Horwitz as a Yankee soldier, Hodge takes Horwitz on a whirl-wind tour of Civil War battlefields and musuems that Hodge calls "The Civil Wargasm."

Confederate History

At that time, in the mid 90's there was a lot of controversy going on about whether the Confederate Battle Flag should be removed from State Flags and State Capitol Buildings.  Horowitz's interviews with protesters on both sides of the issue is fascinating.

Confederate Kitsch

Also great reading in this book is Horowitz's interview with Shelby Foote (1916-2005).  Every much as eccentric as some of the others Horowitz interviewed, Foote still wrote his books in longhand and answered his own phone without a secretary.

Even twenty years later, Confederates In the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War is a very good read.  Five out of Five Stars and Bars.

Tony Horwitz and his wife, novelist Geraldine Brooks