By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Shelby Foote, a Southern historian who became a TV star late in life on Ken Burns' "The Civil War," died Monday at the age of 88.
He visited Dowagiac in October 1995 for a sold-out lecture.
If the Revolutionary War set America free, the Civil War, the "crossroads of our being," determined its direction and charted the country's course.
That defining moment in U.S. history the War Between the States provided in the early 1860s "stays with us" 130 years later, Foote said at Central Middle School on Oct. 18, 1995.
Its old scars sometimes twitch as only a conflict can in which the contemporary equivalent of 14 million casualties were counted.
Memories of the Civil War burn as brightly as their own adolescent experiences will linger vividly in mind.
Foote captivated a capacity crowd in Central auditorium with his storytelling abilities by reading the richly detailed epilogue from his monumental "The Civil War: A Narrative," which involved 20 years of research and composition.
Author Walker Percy called the trilogy an American "Iliad."
While his appearances as "principal guide" in Ken Burns' television series closely associate him with the Civil War in the minds of the public, as a critically-acclaimed novelist the Memphis resident wrote "Tournament," "Follow Me Down," "Jordan County," "Love in a Dry Season," "Shiloh" and "September September."
For the question-and-answer period, which left a line when he left for the reception, Foote seemed Capt. Kirk to an auditorium of Trekkies who came seeking ammunition for Civil War chat rooms on the Internet, to thank him for inspiring them to pursue careers in history or, in the case of a re-enactor, to try to stump him with an arcane tidbit.
To the woman who sought an E.F. Hutton-like reply from Foote to retaliate against a North Carolinian who argues that the South shall secede again, he said, "In the '50s they had all the missiles, but that time's over now and I do not advise another war."
His first questioner admitted he was raised, "as I think most kids were, to think that the issue in the Civil War had been one of slavery. I gathered a great deal from the PBS series and the book that came with it that the real issue in the Southern mind is states rights … I found myself a Southern sympathizer."
Foote responded, "You'll find many Southerners who say the Civil War was not about slavery at all, it was about states rights. They're foolish. It was very much about slavery, which was the burning issue of the day. They had some right to say that because (President Abraham) Lincoln himself denied that it was about slavery and said he had no right to interfere, but it was what caused all the hotheads to secede."