Summary of Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I began to read aloud to my son from a ten-volume collection called The Photographic History of the Civil War. I learned about palindromes from the Southern sea captain Raphael Semmes. I began to match Brady’s still-deaths with the curt stutter of farm roads and rocks.
#2 I had always been a Civil War bore, but when I returned to America after nine years abroad, I found that people were becoming obsessed with the history of the Civil War.
#3 Americans were still obsessed with the Civil War, and this passion was reflected in the media, in the movies, and in the theme park being built beside the Manassas battlefield.
#4 I spent the weekend with the re-enactors, and while I can’t explain my behavior, I was just a normal guy sitting in a house in Virginia looking at pictures of long-dead Confederates.

Sujets

• History
• United States
• Histoire
• Civil War Period

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822544468
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I began to read aloud to my son from a ten-volume collection called The Photographic History of the Civil War. I learned about palindromes from the Southern sea captain Raphael Semmes. I began to match Brady’s still-deaths with the curt stutter of farm roads and rocks.

#2

I had always been a Civil War bore, but when I returned to America after nine years abroad, I found that people were becoming obsessed with the history of the Civil War.

#3

Americans were still obsessed with the Civil War, and this passion was reflected in the media, in the movies, and in the theme park being built beside the Manassas battlefield.

#4

I spent the weekend with the re-enactors, and while I can’t explain my behavior, I was just a normal guy sitting in a house in Virginia looking at pictures of long-dead Confederates.

#5

I went out with the Southern Guard to drill, and was given a bedroll and other kit as needed. I was to bring food but nothing modern. I was half-blind and hobbled by the ill-fitting brogans, but I followed the others to a farm building.

#6

The Southern Guard is a hardcore faction that focuses on historical accuracy. They are very picky about the clothes and weapons their members wear, and they have an authenticity committee to make sure that reenactors dress exactly as their ancestors did.

#7

During the Civil War, the soldiers would stack their muskets and sleep on their ground cloths. The coldest spot in a spooning position is the anchor, and the farting soldier was in that position.

#8

I was woken up by reveille. The men formed ranks and marched across the orchard. The mood was sober and martial, nothing like the night before.

#9

The men were extremely hardcore, and they loved it. They loved the fact that there was no responsibility, and they loved the fact that they could actually go the whole way and be killed just to experience what it was like to be under fire in the War.

#10

I continued to drill the super-rigor mortis until late in the afternoon, when the temperature began to drop. I decided to farb out rather than freeze or die of hunger.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

I had planned to spend a year traveling around the South, visiting the places and people who kept memory of the Civil War alive in the present day. I began my tour in Salisbury, North Carolina, where the War began with the shelling of Fort Sumter.

#2

The Salisbury National Cemetery was the burial ground for Northerners who died at a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. The cemetery’s director, Abe Stice, kept a computer log of the men buried outside. The log for Union soldiers wasn’t long.

#3

The author met with the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who were hosting an annual Lee-Jackson birthday party. The Sons of Confederate Veterans were meeting across the hall from them.

#4

At a birthday party for a Confederate soldier, I heard a speech about Stonewall Jackson that focused on his medical history, his dyspepsia, and his famed hypochondria.

#5

The United Daughters of the Confederacy met across the hall from us. Sue Curtis, a stout woman with large-framed trifocals, told me that she had seventeen Confederate ancestors she could prove.

#6

When I asked what she meant, Sue laughed. It becomes part of your life, she said. Or it takes over your life. She explained that when you research these people, it becomes very personal.

#7

Hawkins, who is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, took particular pride in his status as the Rowan Rifles’ color sergeant. He dreamed of visiting the Maryland battlefield where Fields Hawkins lost his leg.

#8

The town of Salisbury, North Carolina, was a far more pleasant and prosperous place than I’d initially thought. Its residential streets were lined with parks and gardens and gracious homes, which were funded by the millions of dollars earned by locals from investing in a Salisbury-based supermarket chain called Food Lion.

#9

The Curtises were passionate about the War, and it crowded out everything else, including church. They had no offspring of their own to enroll in the Sons or Daughters of the Confederacy, but they started a chapter for cat lovers who wore gray ribbons with cat pins.

#10

The Confederate flag and the memory of the Confederacy are very enduring. Southerners are a military people, and they were back then, still are today.

#11

The Children of the Confederacy, an auxiliary of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, was designed to prepare youngsters for Confederate citizenship. They sang Dixie and recited the C. of C. ’s Creed, which pledged themselves to preserve pure ideals and honor the memory of their ancestors.

#12

The Children’s guide text, titled the Catechism, was published in 1954. It was arranged in a question-and-answer format, and it contained traditional notions about Southern valor.

#13

At the C. of C. ’s memorial service, one girl lingering after the others was Beth, who was president of her chapter. She explained that she was not prejudiced, but she still liked the Confederate symbols and monuments.

#14

The third week of January marked the birthdays of Lee and Jackson, as well as Martin Luther King Jr. In the reconstituted world of the 1990s South, the Confederates’ birthdays were now discreet affairs, while King’s was a national holiday.

#15

When I was a child, I read about L’il Black Sambo putting tiger butter on pancakes. But I didn’t hear about the heroes who came before me, such as Booker T. Washington.

#16

Many blacks in Salisbury, as in the South, were apathetic or unaware of the history surrounding the monument. It was a minority view that the monument should be taken down.
Insights from Chapter 3

#1

The ferry ride to see the remains of Fort Sumter was quiet and calm, unlike the trip I had taken back in time with Dorfman to see the sites of the Civil War.

#2

The first shot fired at the Battle of Fort Sumter was by a Confederate horse, but the only fatality was a Northern horse. The Union garrison inside Sumter fired back until the fort’s wood barracks caught fire, forcing the men to surrender.