Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches
from the Unfinished Civil War by
Tony Horwitz
Savvy, Gifted
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz returned from years of
traipsing through war zones as a foreign correspondent only to find that
his childhood obsession with the Civil War had caught up with him. Near
his house in Virginia, he happened to encounter people who reenact the
Civil War--men who dress up in period costumes and live as Johnny
Rebs and Billy Yanks. Intrigued, he wound up having some odd
adventures with the hardcores, the fellows who try to immerse themselves
in the war, hoping to get what they lovingly term a period rush. Horwitz
spent two years reporting on why Americans are still so obsessed with the
war, and the ways in which it resonates today. In the course of his work,
he made a sobering side trip to cover a murder that was provoked by the
display of the Confederate flag, and he spoke to a number of people
seeking to honor their ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. Horwitz
has a flair for odd details that spark insights, and Confederates in the Attic

is a thoughtful and entertaining book that does much to explain Americas
continuing obsession with the Civil War.
Personal Review: Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from
the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
I read Tony Horwitz's reporting on Civil War reenactors in "The New
Yorker" many years ago and carried around the impression that the book
that grew out of the article was more of the same. I thought it would be
about the reenactors north and south of the Mason - Dixon Line, but it
heads beyond that in a very provocative direction. After falling in with a
group of Confederate reenactors he finds filming outside his home in
Virginia one day, Horwitz, who shared a love of Civil War study with his
father growing up, realizes that the interest in returning again and again to
the battles is significant of the fact that America has never gotten over that
conflict. Especially, he suggests, the South has not.
Following up on his adventure of "spooning" with the reenactors, journalist
Horwitz launched one of his great road trips (see "A Voyage Long and
Strange" and "Blue Latitudes"), traveling throughout the South in search of
Civil War landmarks and how their history bears upon the present. He
explores the controversy over the Confederate flag, visits Shelby Foote
who comes off edgier than his avuncular appearance in Ken Burns' PBS
documentary series, tours the often gaudy "Gone With the Wind" theme
that buoys modern day Atlanta but muddies actual history, visits countless
local museums, traces the rise of the modern Civil Rights movement,
meets the last living Confederate widow and various heritage
organizations, bumps into the "states' rights" argument and ends up
reenacting back on the battlefields with a renewed appreciation for the
soldiers' experience on the front. Horwitz follows each trail as it rises in
front of him, delivering solid journalistic reporting and research in a
narrative that is by turns witty, respectfully somber and always humane.
As the descendant of a Union soldier who pushed off to California after
being mustered out, I never understood the allegiance to the Confederate
flag and icons that to me flatly represented racism. Horwitz has helped me
dig deeper, get at the pluralities and personal nature of the issues, but he
also makes clear that the conflict is far from over. He quotes Faulkner:
"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
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