Confederates In The Attic: Dispatches From The Unfinished Civil War

A hardcore Civil War re-enactor, Hodge is one of the only characters who appears multiple times in Confederates in the Attic. Raised in the North but with strong connections to non-slave owning yeoman farmer ancestors from Alabama, Hodge feels a strong connection to the South and a desire to help maintain its history (233). One of the first people Horwitz meets upon undertaking his journey through the South, Hodge offers Horwitz not only an entrance into the world of Civil War re-enacting, but he also serves as a sounding board and guru for many of Horwitz’s more complex questions. Hodge strives for such authenticity that one experiences a “period rush” (387), and also participates in a weeklong Civil War history sprint that he refers to as “The Civil Wargasm.” A self-styled Civil War evangelist, Hodge possesses a vast knowledge on the Civil War and often takes the time to answer questions of tourists who approach him on the battlefields that he frequents. Hodge refers to himself as a “liberal Confederate” (246), a sort of curator of the history of the everyman solider rather than one who attempts to whitewash or glorify the period as a whole (246).

Westerman was a 19-year-old white man from Guthrie, Kentucky, who was shot by three African-American youth after a heated and controversial exchange in a gas station. Having been flying a Confederate Battle Flag from his truck during a time of racial tension in Guthrie, Westerman got into a brief altercation with a group of young African-American men who claimed that Westerman called them “niggers” (95). The murder and subsequent trial led to a racial firestorm in which Freddie Morrow was convicted of murder. Westerman’s case serves as a not-so-subtle example of the divisions and mistrust that continue to dog many areas of the South, where white and African-American communities exist in an uneasy balance that appears to have the possibility to flame up at any time. Westerman shows that while from a distance, race relations seem to have calmed and normalized since the end of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era, this is not always the case. 

A novelist and Civil War historian from Mississippi now living in Tennessee, Shelby Foote gained national recognition in the United States for his three-volume history of the Civil War. A complex character, Foote is simultaneously erudite and antiquated, a product of his upbringing during a time when “Brazil nuts were called nigger toes,” (152). Foote offers Horwitz one of his most in-depth and paradoxical interviews on the South and the Southern mindset. He serves as an example of how one can be both educated ad thoughtful, and yet still hold conflicting viewpoints, specifically regarding how he would have fought for the South, although he opposed slavery (149). He is anti-Ku Klux Klan, yet an admiring of its founder, Nathan Bedford Forrest (153), and one who seems to embrace the fact that nothing and no one can ever be perfect: “I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears” (156). 

The leader of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Lee is possibly the most lauded and beloved of all Confederate figures for gallantly leading the nation in their struggle to secede from the Union. A wealthy Virginian who graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, Lee led an army that was outnumbered and undersupplied and managed to nearly win a decisive victory that would have secured the South its independence from the United States of America. After his surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865, Lee urged reconciliation with the Union, and he advised his former soldiers to attempt to build a new, peaceful and united America with their former adversaries (269). Following the war, Lee went on to teach at Washington and Lee until his death (237). 

Along with Robert E. Lee, one of the most beloved and venerated Confederate generals of the Civil War. Orphaned at the age of seven, Jackson grew up in the hill country of modern-day West Virginia (235). He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and taught at Virginia Military Institute until the Civil War began (235). Despite being a teetotaler and a hypochondriac, Jackson proved one of the South’s most valuable and successful generals, earning the nickname Stonewall during the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas Junction) in 1861 (233). He was killed during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, when he was hit by friendly fire after returning from inspecting the Union lines (238). One of the most famous “What Ifs” of the Civil War, many Southerners hold the belief that if Jackson had not died, the war might have turned out differently (229).