Shelby Foote Interviews

I'm reading Conversations with Shelby Foote edited by William C. Carter. It's a collection of interviews with the writer, who makes it clear he's a novelist, even though he is well-known for his history of the Civil War.

In a 1970 interview, Foote talked about the high casualty rate in Civil War battles. He spoke of the casualties at the most famous attack at Gettysburg: "at Pickett's charge, they suffer 60 per cent and it's inconceivable to us... the stupidity of it, again. The stupid courage is inconceivable."

The courage that seems foolhardy in retrospect is one of the things that fascinates us today. So many men died in the American Civil War; many others were maimed. And so much of it was wasteful: doomed assaults, inconclusive battles, victories that did not end the war. And even now there is disagreement on what they were fighting for.