Great Non-Fiction: Confederates in the Attic

This book was recommended to me for this series by an invisible friend with the words “…it will let them laugh at the crazy Americans”. Now, while I don’t endorse Laughing at the Crazy Americans – a very narrow-minded European custom – I did indeed laugh at the many deliciously crazy people in this book, but I also enjoyed the unique window it provides into the American soul as well as the exciting adventures the author had on battlefields, in musty old museums and other godforsaken places.

Tony Horwitz, a former war correspondent in the Middle East, wakes up one morning to gunfire in his peaceful Virginia village, only to find a bunch of Civil War reenactors on his lawn, clad in Confederate uniforms so authentic (read: filthy) that even a very desperate Southern soldier on the point of freezing would probably have run from them. He is intrigued and has a good chat with them, which leads to his decision to tour the South in search of the different ways the Civil War is remembered these days.

To this day, the American Civil War (1861-65) exerts a pull on many people that is very hard to resist – from Gone With the Wind to scholarly discussions of the mostly unsuccessful medical procedures practised upon the unfortunate wounded, tens of thousands of books have been written about it, and the fact that it was the first war to be thoroughly photographed and later re-imagined in countless films makes it very accessible and easy to imagine. Most importantly, however, the results of the Civil War, such as the end of slavery and Southern reconstruction have shaped modern America.

“The past”, William Faulkner wrote, “is never dead. It’s not even past.” This is particularly true for the South, where Horwitz’ travels bring him into company with the most extraordinary people many of whom appear to be very much in tune with the past. They are fiercely protective of their personal version of Civil War commemoration – whether it’s the woman who founded the association of the Cats of the Confederacy, the magnetic reenactor Robert Lee Hodge, who features on the cover and who takes Horwitz on a week-long trip of battlefields and other Civil War sites, all in smelly uniforms, or the last living widow of a Confederate soldier. They’re all extremely colourful characters, and it is these encounters alone that make the book worth reading.

Horwitz is also very good at evoking a sense of place and filling you in on bits and pieces of history. His dawn visit to the battlefield of Shiloh is so vividly described that you, too, will see the ghosts of dead soldiers marching towards you; you, too, will rail at the injustice of golf courses and WalMarts built over trenches where thousands died. The book will also provide you with a nice working knowledge of who the principal generals of the war were, and where their respective bodies, legs, arms and horses are buried (not always in the same place).

What I enjoyed most about the book, though, is the author’s own adventure in tracking down these people and places and the open-mindedness with which he approaches everyone from the dangerously violent rednecks in a disreputable bar to little old ladies who look after odd museums containing Civil War trinkets to a dispiritingly prejudiced class of 10th-graders in Selma, Alabama. Horwitz has a marvellous knack for just banging on people’s front doors and getting them to talk to him; for people like me, who are cautious and mistrustful when it comes to strangers, his utter fearlessness in the face of weirdness is almost unbelievable. While preserving his own integrity – he insist on wearing the far less glamorous Union uniform for reenactment purposes and being laughed at as a Yankee – Horwitz is endlessly patient with the opinions of his interview partners, and the picture he finally paints of  South that is sadly divided and crippled by a long-ago war whose issues remain “raw and unresolved” is nuanced, gentle and ultimately understanding of the wide variety of human passions and the complicated legacy of a war that clearly didn’t end in 1865.