by Shelby Foote
Among the more general works, my chief debts are to the following: Lincoln Finds a General by Kenneth P. Williams, Macmillan, 1949-56: Lee’s Lieutenants by Douglas Southall Freeman, Scribner’s, 1942-44: The Army of Tennessee by Stanley F. Horn, Bobbs-Merrill, 1941: Civil War on the Western Border by Jay Monaghan, Little, Brown, 1955: Mr. Lincoln’s Army and This Hallowed Ground by Bruce Catton, Doubleday, 1951 and 1956: Guns on the Western Waters by H. Allen Gosnell, LSU Press, 1949: Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams, Knopf, 1952: Statesmen of the Lost Cause and Lincoln’s War Cabinet by Burton J. Hendrick, Little, Brown, 1939 and 1946: The North Reports the Civil War by J. Cutler Andrews, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955: The Railroads of the Confederacy by Robert C. Black, UNC Press, 1952: The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank by Bell Irvin Wiley, Bobbs-Merrill, 1943 and 1952: Reveille in Washington by Margaret Leech, Harper, 1941: The Beleaguered City by Alfred Hoyt Bill, Knopf, 1946: Experiment in Rebellion by Clifford Dowdey, Doubleday, 1946: The Civil War and Reconstruction by J. G. Randall, Heath, 1937: The Story of the Confederacy by Robert S. Henry, Bobbs-Merrill, 1931: The American Civil War by Carl Russell Fish, Longmans, Green, 1937: The Confederate States of America by E. Merton Coulter, LSU Press, 1950. There were others but these were the main ones, and to each I owe much.
Other obligations, of a more personal nature, I also incurred during the five years that went into the writing of this first volume: to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, for an extended fellowship which made possible the buying of books and bread: to the superintendents, historians, and guides of the National Park Service, for unfailing industry and courtesy in helping me to get the look and feel of the various battlefields: to Robert N. Linscott and Robert D. Loomis of Random House, for combining enthusiasm and patience: to Mrs. O. B. Crittenden of the William Alexander Percy Memorial Library, Greenville, Mississippi, for the continuing loan of that institution’s set of the Official Records. To all these I am grateful, as well as to friends in Memphis who had the out-of-hours grace to refrain from mentioning the Civil War.
A word I suppose is in order as to the use I made of these materials, original and secondary, not only because it is customary but also because it appears to be necessary, at least in certain eyes. One of the best of the latter-day authorities, in the course of his carefully documented exegesis, cautions against accepting the testimony of Lew Wallace as to what took place at a council of war preceding the march on Donelson. “Recollections of events long past are always to be suspected,” he explains, “and especially when set down by a writer of fiction.” Wallace then was doubly suspect. He had waited, and he had written The Fair God and Ben-Hur. He was a novelist.
Well, I am a novelist, and what is more I agree with D. H. Lawrence’s estimate of the novel as “the one bright book of life.” I might also agree with the professor quoted above, but only by considering each witness on his merit, his devotion as a writer to what should be his main concern. The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth—not a different truth: the same truth—only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us how it was: to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them.
This has been my aim, as well, only I have combined the two. Accepting the historian’s standards without his paraphernalia, I have employed the novelist’s methods without his license. Instead of inventing characters and incidents, I searched them out—and having found them, I took them as they were. Nothing is included here, either within or outside quotation marks, without the authority of documentary evidence which I consider sound. Although I have left out footnotes, believing that they would detract from the book’s narrative quality by intermittently shattering the illusion that the observer is not so much reading a book as sharing an experience, I have thought it proper to employ the three dots of elision to signify the omission of interior matter from quotations. In all respects, the book is as accurate as care and hard work could make it. Partly I have done this for my own satisfaction; for in writing a history, I would no more be false to a fact dug out of a valid document than I would be false to a “fact” dug out of my head in writing a novel. Also, I have tried for accuracy because I have never known a modern historical instance where the truth was not superior to distortion, by any standard and in every way. Wherever the choice lay between soundness and “color,” soundness had it every time. Many problems were encountered in the course of all this study, but lack of color in the original materials was never one of them. In fact, there was the rub. Such heartbreak as was here involved came not from trying to decide what to include, but rather from trying to decide what to omit, and in the end the omissions far outnumbered the inclusions.
One word more perhaps will not be out of place. I am a Mississippian. Though the veterans I knew are all dead now, down to the final home guard drummer boy of my childhood, the remembrance of them is still with me. However, being nearly as far removed from them in time as most of them were removed from combat when they died, I hope I have recovered the respect they had for their opponents until Reconstruction lessened and finally killed it. Biased is the last thing I would be; I yield to no one in my admiration for heroism and ability, no matter which side of the line a man was born or fought on when the war broke out, fourscore and seventeen years ago. If pride in the resistance my forebears made against the odds has leaned me to any degree in their direction, I hope it will be seen to amount to no more, in the end, than the average American’s normal sympathy for the underdog in a fight.
— S.F.
COMPREHENSIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS
Volume One
I.
CHAPTER 1. PROLOGUE—THE OPPONENTS
1. Secession: Davis and Lincoln
2. Sumter; Early Maneuvers
3. Statistics North and South
CHAPTER 2. FIRST BLOOD; NEW CONCEPTIONS
1. Manassas—Southern Triumph
2. Anderson, Frémont, McClellan
3. Scott’s Anaconda; the Navy
4. Diplomacy; the Buildup
CHAPTER 3. THE THING GETS UNDER WAY
1. The West: Grant, Fort Henry
2. Donelson—The Loss of Kentucky
3. Gloom; Manassas Evacuation
4. McC Moves to the Peninsula
II.
CHAPTER 4. WAR MEANS FIGHTING …
1. Pea Ridge; Glorieta; Island Ten
2. Halleck-Grant, Jston-Bgard: Shiloh
3. Farragut, Lovell: New Orleans
4. Halleck, Beauregard: Corinth
CHAPTER 5. FIGHTING MEANS KILLING
1. Davis Frets; Lincoln-McClellan
2. Valley Campaign; Seven Pines
3. Lee, McC: The Concentration
4. The Seven Days; Hezekiah
III.
CHAPTER 6. THE SUN SHINES SOUTH
1. Lincoln Reappraisal; Emancipation?
2. Grant, Farragut, Buell
3. Bragg, K. Smith, Breckinridge
4. Lee vs. Pope: Second Manassas
CHAPTER 7. TWO ADVANCES; TWO RETREATS
1. Invasion West: Richmond, Munfordville
2. Lee, McClellan: Sharpsburg
3. The Emancipation Proclamation
4. Corinth-Perryville: Bragg Retreats
CHAPTER 8. LAST, BEST HOPE OF EARTH
1. Lincoln’s Late-Fall Disappointments
2. Davis: Lookback and Outlook
3. Lincoln: December Message
Volume Two
I.
CHAPTER l. THE LONGEST JOURNEY
1. Davis, Westward and Return
2. Goldsboro; Fredericksburg
3. Prairie Grove; Galveston
4. Holly Springs; Walnut Hills
5. Murfreesboro: B
ragg Retreats
CHAPTER 2. UNHAPPY NEW YEAR
1. Lincoln; Mud March; Hooker
2. Arkansas Post; Transmiss; Grant
3. Erlanger; Richmond Bread Riot
4. Rosecrans; Johnston; Streit
5. Vicksburg—Seven Failures
CHAPTER 3. DEATH OF A SOLDIER
1. Naval Repulse at Charleston
2. Lee, Hooker; Mosby; Kelly’s Ford
3. Suffolk: Longstreet Southside
4. Hooker, Stoneman: The Crossing
5. Chancellorsville; Jackson Dies
II.
CHAPTER 4. THE BELEAGUERED CITY
1. Grant’s Plan; the Run; Grierson
2. Eastward, Port Gibson to Jackson
3. Westward, Jackson to Vicksburg
4. Port Hudson; Banks vs. Gardner
5. Vicksburg Siege, Through June
CHAPTER 5. STARS IN THEIR COURSES
1. Lee, Davis; Invasion; Stuart
2. Gettysburg Opens; Meade Arrives
3. Gettysburg, July 2: Longstreet
4. Gettysburg, Third Day: Pickett
5. Cavalry; Lee Plans Withdrawal
CHAPTER 6. UNVEXED TO THE SEA
1. Lee’s Retreat; Falling Waters
2. Milliken’s Bend; Helena Repulse
3. Vicksburg Falls; Jackson Reburnt
4. Lincoln Exults; N.Y. Draft Riot
5. Davis Declines Lee’s Resignation
III.
CHAPTER 7. RIOT AND RESURGENCE
1. Rosecrans; Tullahoma Campaign
2. Morgan Raid; Chattanooga Taken
3. Charleston Seige; Transmississippi
4. Chickamauga—First Day
5. Bragg’s Victory Unexploited
CHAPTER 8. THE CENTER GIVES
1. Sabine Pass; Shelby; Grant Hurt
2. Bristoe Station; Buckland Races
3. Grant Opens the Cracker Line
4. Davis, Bragg; Gettysburg Address
5. Missionary Ridge; Bragg Relieved
CHAPTER 9. SPRING CAME ON FOREVER
1. Mine Run; Meade Withdraws
2. Olustee; Kilpatrick Raid
3. Sherman, Meridian; Forrest
4. Lincoln-Davis, a Final Contrast
5. Grant Summoned to Washington
Volume Three
I.
CHAPTER l. ANOTHER GRAND DESIGN
1. Grant in Washington—His Plan
2. Red River, Camden: Reevaluation
3. Paducah, Fort Pillow; Plymouth
4. Grant Poised; Joe Davis; Lee
CHAPTER 2. THE FORTY DAYS
1. Grant Crosses; the Wilderness
2. Spotsylvania—“All Summer”
3. New Market; Bermuda Hundred
4. North Anna; Cold Harbor; Early
CHAPTER 3. RED CLAY MINUET
1. Dalton to Pine Mountain
2. Brice’s; Lincoln; “Alabama”
3. Kennesaw to Chattahoochee
4. Hood Replaces Johnston
II.
CHAPTER 4. WAR IS CRUELTY …
1. Petersburg; Early I; Peace?
2. Hood vs. Sherman; Mobile Bay; Memphis Raid; Atlanta Falls
3. Crater; McClellan; Early II
4. Price Raid; “Florida”; Cushing; Forrest Raids Mid-Tenn.
5. Hood-Davis; Lincoln Reelected.
CHAPTER 5. YOU CANNOT REFINE IT
1. Petersburg Trenches; Weldon RR
2. March to Sea; Hood, Spring Hill
3. Franklin; Hood Invests Nashville
4. Thomas Attacks; Hood Retreats
5. Savannah Falls; Lincoln Exultant
III.
CHAPTER 6. A TIGHTENING NOOSE
1. Grant; Ft. Fisher; 13th Amendment
2. Confed Shifts; Lee Genl-in-Chief?
3. Blair Received; Hampton Roads
4. Hatcher’s Run; Columbia Burned
CHAPTER 7. VICTORY, AND DEFEAT
1. Sheridan, Early; Second Inaugural
2. Goldsboro; Sheridan; City Point
3. Five Forks—Richmond Evacuated
4. Lee, Grant Race for Appomattox
CHAPTER 8. LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT
1. Davis-Johnston; Sumter; Booth
2. Durham; Citronelle; Davis Taken
3. K. Smith; Naval; Fort Monroe
4. Postlude: Reconstruction, Davis
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM VINTAGE BOOKS
The Civil War: A Narrative
Volume II, Fredericksburg to Meridian
“Gettysburg … is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.… Mr. Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist’s skill in directing the reader’s attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest. His organization of facts could hardly be bettered.”—Atlantic
“Though the events of this middle year of the Civil War have been recounted hundreds of times, they have rarely been re-created with such vigor and such picturesque detail as in Mr. Foote’s ‘Civil War: A Narrative.’ ”—New York Times Book Review
“The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting are all controlled by a constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist’s feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian’s scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequaled.”—WALTER MILLS
The Civil War: A Narrative
Volume III, Red River to Appomattox
“Foote is a novelist who temporarily abandoned fiction to apply the novelist’s shaping hand to history: his model is not Thucydides but The Iliad and his story, innocent of notes and formal bibliography, has a literary design. Not by accident … but for cathartic effect is so much space given to the war’s unwinding, its final shudders and convulsions.… To read this chronicle is an awesome and moving experience. History and literature are rarely so thoroughly combined as here; one finishes this volume convinced that no one need undertake this particular enterprise again.”—Newsweek
“I have never read a better, more vivid, more understandable account of the savage battling between Grant’s and Lee’s armies.… Foote stays with the human strife and suffering, and unlike most Southern commentators, he does not take sides. In objectivity, in range, in mastery of detail, in beauty of language and feeling for the people involved, this work surpasses anything else on the subject. Written in the tradition of the great historian-artists—Gibbon, Prescott, Napier, Freeman—it stands alongside the work of the best of them.”—New Republic
“The most written-about war in history has, with this completion of Shelby Foote’s trilogy, been given the epic treatment it deserves.”—Providence Journal
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SHELBY FOOTE was born in Greenville, Mississippi, and attended school there until he entered the University of North Carolina. During World War II he served in the European theater as a captain of field artillery. He has written five novels: Tournament, Follow Me Down, Love in a Dry Season, Shiloh and Jordan County. He has been awarded three Guggenheim fellowships. He died in 2005.
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