Shelby Foote was a man of letters with little use for the limelight. Like many scholars, writers and other scribblers, he preferred talking to people by way of the printed page, not from the pulpit. He was not a performer.
He was, however, a great American character.
Foote, a native of Mississippi, died in Memphis Monday at age 88. Although Civil War buffs had been fans for decades, it was Ken Burn's PBS documentary about the Civil War that finally propelled Foote into the national footlights. As a Civil War historian, he looked the part. He had the beard and bearing of a Kentucky colonel and his voice oozed a richness like flowing molasses. But more than that, Foote knew his stuff. Long ago he'd decided that the Civil War was America's "Iliad" and he spent his life debunking the myths about the war, while at the same time bestowing it with mythological grandeur. William Faulkner felt Foote's novel "Shiloh" was even better than "The Red Badge of Courage." His three-volume history is today considered an American treasure. In short, like so many Southerners, he could tell a tale. But unlike Mark Twain, who said, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story," Foote took the position that the truth was always a good story.
According to his lengthy obituary in the Los Angeles Times, he was a man of contradictions — a mediocre soldier who relished war, a novelist who won awards for nonfiction and an opponent of racial segregation who loved the Confederate flag. But inconsistencies aside, after the Burns series the nation wholeheartedly embraced him. He seemed to embody the good things the country wanted to believe about the South — that its people were high-minded, droll, self-possessed and had a regal bearing. Foote's grandfather was a Civil War hero, having his horse shot out from under him at the Battle of Shiloh. His legacy was, by turns, lofty and low, yet always fascinating. To coin a line for an old tune, Shelby Foote was what people "like about the South."
In the end, expecting the South to have all the qualities and grace of a Shelby Foote was asking a lot. Nevertheless, Shelby Foote did have those qualities — and Foote was a part of the South — so they existed, if not in abundance, at least in the person of one of the nation's most beloved and respected historians.