Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative Volume 1 Chapter 3

We’re continuing with a look at the accuracy of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative. Once again, let me stress that I regularly recommend Foote’s trilogy, which I regard as a work of art, as a good overview of the war. However, it shouldn’t be used as a source. Of course, anyone who claims Foote is anything but perfect will be instantly attacked by Foote’s fans, who will either mischaracterize that person’s claims or simply not even read them and make assumptions about them.

I undertook this project because there are those who ask exactly what Foote got wrong. This is an attempt to answer that question. While it’s usually not fair to criticize an author for not knowing scholarship that didn’t exist when they wrote, in this case I think it is fair to use the latest scholarship because it shows why Foote shouldn’t be used as a source by today’s students of the war. This is not an attempt to assert Foote deliberately falsified his work or was a complete incompetent. Foote, who by his own admission was not a historian, was a prisoner of his sources. Because he didn’t do original research he is stuck with whatever errors and misconceptions the secondary sources he used had. My purpose is solely to show why Foote shouldn’t be used as a source and to answer the question of what exactly is inaccurate in his trilogy.

We started with this post and continued with this post. We now proceed with the third post of the series.

On page 171 Foote tells us George B. Crittenden was the “son of the senator whose compromise efforts had staved off war for a decade.” This is a reference to Senator John J. Crittenden. The claim, at best, is an overstatement. Sen. Crittenden didn’t spend a decade staving off war. His big effort was the Crittenden Compromise of 1860-1861. This is not to say he did nothing to try to compromise before 1860. See here. See also here.

Also on page 171 he claims former Vice President John C. Breckinridge “had been elected to the Senate, where his opposition to the Administration’s war policy resulted in an order for his arrest.” This is another erroneous statement. William C. “Jack” Davis wrote an excellent biography of Breckinridge. He says there were rumors Breckinridge might be arrested. In one case on friend of Breckenridge’s claimed to have overheard three unknown men talking to each other about arresting him. [William C. Davis, Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol, p. 283] Over the next six pages Davis discusses fears Breckinridge might be arrested, but there is never any evidence of an order for his arrest. It was all just rumor and imagination, and Foote passed this along as if it were true.

On page 196 Foote claims U.S. Grant’s appointment to West Point “identified hi as Ulysses Simpson Grant.” Actually, it identified him as “Ulysses S. Grant.” On page 197 he says Grant’s “one outstanding accomplishment at the Academy had been the setting of a high-jump record on a horse no other cadet would ride.” Grant was also a talented artist at West Point, and it’s a bit much to claim the high jump was the only outstanding accomplishment of Grant’s.

On pages 242-243 he writes, “Despite the example of Frémont, or perhaps because he thought that the furor which had followed Frémont’s dismissal would have taught Lincoln a lesson, Cameron reasoned that by ingratiating himself with the Jacobins he would insure himself against any action by the President, who would not dare to antagonize them further by molesting another man who had won their favor. Any attack on slavery was the answer. Emancipation was the issue on which Lincoln was treading softest, since it was the one that cut sharpest along the line dividing the Administration’s supporters and opponents. Accordingly, with the help of his legal adviser Stanton, Cameron drafted and included in his annual Department report a long passage advocating immediate freedom for southern slaves and their induction into the Union army, thereby adding muscle to the arm of the republic and weakening the enemy, who as ‘rebellious traitors’ had forfeited their rights to any property at all, let alone the ownership of fellow human beings. Without consulting the President–though it was usual for such documents to be submitted for approval–the Secretary had the report printed and sent out to the postmasters of all the principal cities for distribution to the press as soon as it was being read in Congress.” The reference to Radical Republicans as “Jacobins” shows the attitude that those in Congress who pushed for Black freedom and equality were simply wild-eyed fanatics.

On page 245 Foote says of Stanton, “To a man who came demanding release for a friend locked up on suspicion of treason, Stanton roared: ‘If I tap that little bell, I can send you to a place where you will never hear the dogs bark. And by heaven I’ll do it if you say another word!’ ” We know he didn’t fabricate this because the anecdote appears elsewhere. The problem is, Stanton likely never said it. A “little bell” anecdote was originally attributed to William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State. As Walter Stahr, one of Seward’s biographers, wrote, “He reportedly boasted to Lord Lyons in late 1861 that ‘I can touch a bell on my right hand, and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio; I can touch a bell again, and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York; and no power on earth, except that of the President, can release them. Can the Queen of England do so much?’ In all likelihood Seward never said this to Lyons: there is no trace of the remark in the detailed reports of Lyons to the British foreign minister, and at a dinner party in early 1864 Lyons told an interlocutor that he remembered no such conversation. The quote first appeared in anti-administration newspapers in 1863, and it has been repeated regularly since then.” [Walter Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man, p. 285] Both Stahr and William Marvel wrote recent biographies of Stanton, and the quote doesn’t appear in either biography. It’s likely Stanton also never said anything about a “little bell,” but it’s a good story and thus Foote couldn’t resist including it without looking into whether or not it was true.

When he writes about the USS Merrimack he misspells it as “Merrimac.” That’s not a huge error, but it’s an error nonetheless. If the question is how accurate is Foote, we need to know about the misspelling.

The rest of the chapter appears to be relatively accurate.