(This is a long-overdue book review for me. I trust that, even if you’ve read and forgotten Confederates in the Attic, you’ll bear with me as I dredge up old bones!)
Tony Horowitz, in the 1999 book, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, chronicles time spent amount modern-day history enthusiasts with a penchant for dressing up like Johnny Reb. Horowitz, in this book, chronicles time spent among Civil War reenactors; particularly, Civil War reenactors who reenact on the Confederate side.
By his own admission, Horowitz is fascinated with Confederate history. He writes about painting a mural of Pickett’s charge on the ceiling of his attic as a small boy, and about looking at books on the Confederacy with his father. Confederates is, in part, an attempt at introspection.
I think this is where Confederates fails. Horowitz, in attempting to examine an obsession that is similar in some ways but vastly different in principle from his own. Horowitz is a Northerner, and takes a Northerner’s view of the Southern Life. The fact is, however, that it really is difficult to do this. Horowitz, while he does reach some degree of objectivity, seems to be projecting either his own biases or the biases of those around him onto the reenactors. In addition, the implicit conclusion is that those who hold the Confederacy dear do so for racist reasons. I think that this is more than a little bit insulting, and it misses the point that race isn’t the be-all and end-all of history. Whatever Horowitz may be as a journalist and pundit, he misses something important here in terms of the history.
Still, Confederates is worth the read, if only to be shocked and amazed by some of the more bizarre practices that Horowitz chronicles.
Selected reading:
