I have only just started to read Shelby Foote's first volume narrative of the civil war. It's 40 + hours narrated, therefore this will take me some time and I have no idea that I will be able to finish it. It's going to have to keep me interested, but I'll see how it goes.
I am starting to understand the criticism however. Before I thought he'd be Lost Cause-y and I avoided him on that account, but that's not it. He has been fairly balanced so far. However, a couple of things I have noticed:
(1.) The context for the civil war (the background) is very superficially covered and is limited to a brief political narrative that doesn't provide a good enough explanation for a conflict of that magnitude. Other narratives like McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom set the stage better, describing succinctly the antebellum Americans North and South, the political and economic issues that separated them, and how the animosity, hostility, and political tensions increased an ever widening divide over the future of the country and the spread or containment of slavery until things erupted in a civil war. Shelby doesn't really build that escalating tension very well. His narrative started with secession already underway and it's discussed briefly as a political issue. He accomplished the description in a fair manner by focusing equally on Davis and Lincoln to start. He was balanced in this, but I felt like something was missing.
(2.) Was Jeff Davis really crying on the U.S. Senate floor when he announced he was going back to Mississippi after his state seceded? Shelby's description was of a sorrowful, crying Davis. Without footnotes or anything to corroborate that, one is left wondering whether colorful descriptions like this are Shelby adding his interpretation to enrich the narrative, whether he read this in an old newspaper somewhere, or this is an embellished story? There are just things he describes that make one wonder how he could have known them.
What's that thesis about?
Bringing the