Confederates In The Attic: Dispatches From The Unfinished Civil War

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapter 5

Chapters 6-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapter 10

Chapters 11-13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 8-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 8 Summary: “Tennessee The Ghost Marks of Shiloh”

Remaining in Tennessee, Horwitz visits the cite of the Civil War battle of Shiloh, where he encounters a series of other history enthusiasts and reenactors who each have their own specific reasons for exploring the battlefield. One, a Northerner named Bryson Powers, has come to locate the exact spot where his great-grandfather was wounded. A pair of Southerners, Mike Brantley and Steve Oxford, the former bringing his great-grandfather’s gun, have also come to the battlefield to experience the type of “time travel” (162) common to so many Civil War sites.

Apart from these men, Horwitz also encounters Scott Sams, who thinks of himself less as a reenactor and more of a pilgrim to the battlefield: “This is a religious thing for me…Christians have Easter Sunday and midnight mass. I’ve got Shiloh on the anniversary of the battle” (167). The final part of Horwitz’ Shiloh experience is with a park ranger named Paul Hawke, who takes Horwitz on a semi-official tour of the battlefield. Hawke explains how “wars leave ‘ghost marks’ on the landscape” (176), such that often much of what people think of a battlefield’s history from only studying it from “eye-level” (176) may be wrong. This notion is something that has been dogging Horwitz for a while now, and he admits “[Hawke) had made me wonder if everything I thought I knew about Shiloh—and about many other battles—was closer to fiction than fact” (176).

After touring many of the famous landmarks from the battle, Horwitz coincidentally encounters a young German academic named Wolfgang Hochbruck, who, interestingly enough, had previously emailed Horwitz asking to share notes. Hochbruck is a graduate student writing a Ph.D. thesis about the Civil War, and someone who has been intrigued by the war since he read Shiloh, by Shelby Foote, “at age nine in German translation” (184). Hochbruck describes how the Southern experience has taken a foothold among many in Germany, although he worries that for some it might be a way for some to “act of Nazi fantasies” (187), yet his thesis and his hope revolves around the idea that the reenacting of the war does more to foster a sense of peace than violence, saying “Maybe if we played at war more instead of really using weapons, our world would be a better place” (187).

Chapter 9 Summary: “Mississippi The Minie Ball Pregnancy”

Chapter 9 finds Horwitz for the first time exploring the “Deep South” by travelling to Mississippi, where he begins by visiting the site of the Battle of Vicksburg, “the Gibraltar of the West” (191). However, the city seems to have become more of a mainstay for gamblers, few of whom “bothered to see Vicksburg’s historic sites” (192). When he does arrive on the battlefield, Horwitz describes how it differs from Shiloh, in that while Shiloh was sparse and barren, Vicksburg presented a “monument overload” (196).

The city of Vicksburg, though, offers Horwitz a myriad of experiences that otherwise might have been easily overlooked. He discovers the old Jewish quarter and cemetery of the town; he explores how the war left the region bitterly divided, as the city of was one of only two in Mississippi that voted against secession (198), and he notes the racial history of the place, which seems to have a white and African-American way of doing everything. Says one resident, “Their attitude is, ‘You do Memorial Day, we’ll do Veterans day…It’s that way with a lot of things here…if blacks put something on, whites don’t come. And too often when whites put something on, we don’t go” (206).

Chapters 8-9 Analysis

Following the themes set in motion in Chapter 7, Chapters 8 and 9 take a look at the reach of the Civil War and how its myths began to be created. While the earlier sections of the book focus more on the people and the politics that the legacy of the war has created, Horwitz now tries to talk about the lesser-known aspects of the conflict, and he also starts to undermine the perceptions that surround many Civil War battles. This will be a continued theme through many of the following chapters and serve as the unifying motif that runs through the second half of the book.

After being forced to look at the Civil War through a new perspective, Horwitz starts to deconstruct the popular legends that have sprung up around many Civil War battles. He also begins to slowly connect the earlier themes of separateness and chosen segregation in a subtler and more nuanced way, as though he is attempting to bring together the thematic elements of the first six chapters with what will ultimately come. Moreover, he looks at what is being lost to time, especially the aspects of the war that have not managed to make their way into popular consciousness. If Chapter 5 represented an emotional low point in the book, Chapters 8 and 9 represent the height of Horwitz’s confusion. It is as though at this point all of his preconceptions have fully been swept away, and he needs to reassess both his method for travelling the South as well as his belief that he previously understood the history of the Civil War. In doing so, the remainder of the book no longer seems to compartmentalize the historical from the eccentric from the mythical, but rather examines all of them together in such a way that lends a true honesty to the actual legacy of the Civil War.