Shelby Foote- Ken Burns talks about his interview with Civil War Historian Shelby Foote
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ธ.ค. 2023
- This video contains Ken Burns talking about how and why he picked Shelby Foote for his Civil War series. Burns gives us an in-depth look into why Shelby Foote was so instrumental in the success of his Civil War series.
Could listen to Shelby Foote reminisce about the war forever.
I watched the "civil war" in awe..and there was something timeless and so southern about Shelby Foote when his spoke , with his accent. It was like a ,sometimes, jaded reflective southern officer giving honest and even appraisal of events he actually was involved in. RIP great storyteller 😢❤🌹
Shelby Foote an amazing writer and historian his writings will be read for generations
I watched PBS's week long series on the Civil War, and the single person I remember vividly is Shelby Foote. He was riveting to listen to, and all these decades later his voice is impressed on me. It's quite astounding to consider even now.
He’s amazing
Shelby Foote has been a read and re-read of mine for decades. Readable and often bringing the reader into being present as an observer in Mr Foote's abilities to write with subtle passion and balanced discussions. A pillar of American historians.
Watching the Civil War in the UK made me seek out the Shelby Foote Civil War trilogy.Wonderfully written and the perfect accompaniment to The Civil War films.Ken Burn is a master of his craft.
Shelby Foote was completely mesmerizing when he talked; the stories he told drew you right in. His contribution to the Ken Burns series on the Civil War was immeasurable! I couldn't get enough of him. Thanks for reminding me of how much I enjoyed that series!
I just wish what he said wasn’t delusional
@@FarOutAtlCan you give me a few examples of things that he wrote or said that are false? This is an honest question.
@@noah2633 his assertion that the war brought America closer together and that it was fought over state's rights would be the two delusions that stand out the most.
the overall message that he conveys about the Civil War is regurgitated Lost Cause propaganda, so it would inherently be inaccurate and delusional.
@@noah2633 with that being said I do agree with the original post that he spoke in ways that mesmerize. he's very charming.
@@FarOutAtl I think he was quite clear that the American Civil War was primarily about the institution of slavery and the dynamics surrounding it.
Brian Lamb with C-SPAN interviewed many people. The only interview that I can recall in which he spent a lot of his time smiling, was his interview with Shelby Foote. I think Mr. Lamb, like myself and other commentators here, found Mr. Foote's contribution to Ken Burns' civil war series absolutely mesmerizing.
I could listen to Ken and Shelby all day. There's more fascinating knowledge between just the two of them, than in any hundred people. I would've liked to have sat down to a beer with Shelby.
I had heard Shelby Foote even before Burns's documentary.
Foote was captivating not only in his expansive, detailed knowledge but also and especially in his telling of it.
PS - another wonderful Civil War historian was James I. Robertson, Jr. (1930-2019)
Shelby was terrific
Foote's voice was like no other and had a way of tapping into our emotions in a gentle way. I often thought that perhaps he was the reincarnation of a Confederate soldier himself. I could listen to him speak on anything, hoping that I could somehow learn to emulate his mellifluous tone.
Thank you so very much for this. And thank you Ken Burns.
Ken Burns' documentary was the reason that I bought Shelby Foote's humongous history of the American Civil War, and it was well worth the buy.
Shelby was living quite comfortably on the proceeds from his novels and the trilogy, but the Burns doc made him very wealthy, thanks to people just like you.
Being from the South and having long passed relatives that endured the conflict, I get the sense that Mr. Foote understood both sides of the civil war more than probably any other man in the last 100 years. A fine southern gentleman and scholar who is sorely missed.
I remember being in a hurry to get home to watch this documentary on PBS. A fantastic series, i watched it agai years later. Shelby Foote is quite a character. 😊
Many years ago, my dad organized a conference of southern Foundation leadership at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. He needed a keynote speaker and thought Shelby Foote would be entertaining. He called Mr. Foote and asked if he would be willing to speak at the conference and what his fee would be. He answered that he had no interest in speaking at the conference. My dad changed tactics and FedEx'd a $5,000 check to Mr. Foote's home as an advance to speak at the conference. I attended the conference and watched Mr. Foote speak for an entertaining 20 minutes. lol
The full 3 hour or so recording with Shelby Foote used to be on TH-cam, it seems to have been taken down. Does anyone know where it can be found?
THis makes me want to re-read Shelby's Civil War trilogy.
Shelby Foote also briefly appeared in Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary, where he mentioned meeting Babe Ruth or some other big time player. I wonder if this came up when he and Ken Burns met for the Civil War interview.
Foote is amazing.
I also liked Ed Bearss' comments. (Wish there'd been more of him...)
Interesting you should speak highly of Bears. I had the opposite reaction listening to him on various occasions. His overly dramatic enthusiasm was a turnoff for me. Glad you liked him.
I love reading about history. Are Shelby Footes Civil War books still worth a read today?
If anyone here hasn't seen teh documentary he's talking about on Huey Long, you need to watch it NOW. It's a masterpiece, and has huge bearing on our political state today. Huey Long and trump are incredibly similar.
This is a shame because it's beginning to reveal TH-cam's disdain for Conservative rights.
No matter though. If Trump does win in November, this type of thinking, hence control will go by the wayside. If Trump loses the election, our country will change forever and we will have made Franklin's " if-you-can-keep-it " statement a sad truth.
Those who look forward to this and support a full governmental takeover are foolish...because once you destroy liberty, it is lost forever. Liberty is precious but fragile.
I hope all of them enjoy their Socialist utopia. HAH!
"Stars in their course" by Shelby Foote"is a very detailed hour by hour account of the Gettysburg campaign..I'm sure the movie Gettysburg used it extensively ..
It was based on the novel , "The Killer Angels". Almost everything in Ken Burns documentary comes from the "The Killer Angels".
The movie "Gettysburg" was based on the novel "The Killer Angels," by Michael Shaara.
Stars in Their Courses wasn't a separate book until long after his trilogy "The Civil War -a Narrative" came out. It is, in fact, the middle section of the middle book in the trilogy.
I could listen to Shelby Foote speaking all day. If the Civil War was made nowadays I suppose he'd talk to Gary Adelman. Who would also be great.
If I had to change voices, I would choose Selby’s. Stonewall Jackson likely developed Diffuse Alveolar Damage which has been called Danang Lung and shock lung, a non infectious acute respiratory condition with a variety of cause including hypovolemia from battle wounds.
2:14 - that’s interesting. Wow 🎩
I have a ACTUAL letter and photo from Pvt. Richard Bradford, 6th Indiana infantry. I tried to donate it to the the Indiana State Achieve but they "ghosted" me! So it sits in my garage. Hopefully the rats don't get to it. It just talks about battles, what they are doing in camp, and when they were going to move out and what other divisions were there. It's probably not that valuable. There, I am sure, many written accounts by actual Civil War witnesses floating around.
You’d be wrong regarding its value, shame on the Indiana State Archives for ghosting you. It’s imperative they become digitized as they certainly won’t last much longer
Forget Indiana then..Try the American Battlefield Trust, or even call the Library of Congress in D.C. Both of them would probably take it to preserve as part of history. If they dont want it, there is a youtube channel called The History Underground, you could mail it to him. He loves American history and all the wars we fought in and would know where it could be put on display for all americans to appreciate.
If this is from 4 months ago, why is it in 1990 resolution?
I also really enjoyed Shelby Foote's contribution to the series, bought and read his trilogy after and absolutely loved them. However, many historians now consider his part in the doccumentary problematic, and his books similarly so for their downplaying of the centrality of slavery, the over-emphasis on 'state's rights', the glorification of the CSA and reliance on Lost Cause tropes.
The emotionalism surrounding the issue of slavery is bizarre. The institution of slavery was not somehow particularly heinous; it's an antiquated mode of production. It's not a big deal.
I'd just like to say that slavery was a very big deal.
@@akivafox3588 I understand. In our society, we are taught that the institution of slavery was a world-historical crime that cried out to the heavens for redress. It's extremely difficult to step out of one's culture.
He was very good on a lot of things the battles, the personalities of the major players, the attitudes of at least the white populations north and south but did somewhat downplay the centrality of slavery to the war and and seemed unable or unwilling to look at things from the POV of African Americans be they free or slave. I'm not a throw the baby out with the bathwater type so still think he is a significant contributor to to Civil War scholarship while recognizing his shortcomings and blind spots.
@@noah2633 "not particularly heinous," and "not a big deal." I guess not for you.
Yeah ... not much really *_HAS_* to happen the way it will - but - the pieces all fell into place ... and it does ... had not all those pieces fallen into place the way they did - maybe it doesn't ...
What if Halifax had wanted the job?
.
Shelby Foote was not into nonsense. He was a Interrogator of history
Somehow, I wonder if NPR would do anything at all with a guy like Shelby Foote in 2024.
'Promo sm'
Epitome of their fear doing this.
Without Southern bias? Really?
As an english man thirsty for knowledge i watched the entire series about the american civil war, i could NOT stop watching as it was so intense, complex, terrifying and i remember seing shelby foote and being enthralled by his mastery of it all, there was nothing he didnt know, the programme was one of the best ever made by american tv, ken burns has a way of delivering his documentaries that draw you in and completely captivate you, this documentary and his other masterpiece about the history of jazz are possibly the greatest things ever made by an american producer, incredible works, i cant imagine how fantastic it would be to just sit with shelby foote and listen to him..talk and talk alongside mr burns...id be in heaven....bravo 👏👏
Shelby Foote's mesmerizing voice reminds me of a mixture of a good pipe tobacco, bourbon whiskey, and soft, worn, buttery leather. (sigh...) Fabulous!
Shelby Foote reminds me of my high school history teacher, Glen Vandervliet. I sat in his classroom for an entire year, mesmerized by his narrative style, and never got so much as a single page of notes, but was so enthralled that I learned everything he taught and went to major in history because of him. How I wish I could have studied under Shelby Foote as well.
Shelby Foote was not a historian, he was a writer who dabbled in history.
Right. Shelby Foote was a novelist who was commissioned to write a one volume popular history (which grew to three volumes) of the Civil War for the general public in the 1950s and early 60s. He was not a historian, and for what he was commissioned for he didn't need to be one. There are no footnotes or bibliographies with primary and secondary sources in any of his books, so you don't where his information is coming from or how accurate it is. His writing and his personality makes him popular with a lot of people who know little about the Civil War and aren't going to did that deep, but it makes him an unreliable source (unlike his contemporary, Douglas Southall Freeman) for historians and anybody seriously studying the Civil War. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy reading his work, just that you can't use him to support any argument. There has been a tremendous amount of research since then, (the digitization of archives in the last twenty years has been a goldmine for historians), so even Freeman's works are somewhat (but not entirely) outdated.
In his history of the American Civil War, are any of his statements demonstrably false?
@@noah2633 I can't remember. I haven't read anything by Foote in at least a decade. (The story of Lincoln at Gettysburg we now know is false. Lincoln interrupted by applause five times in two minutes, but he finished people were expecting more. That's why there was no applause, although he did receive thunderous once the audience realized he was done. The Gettysburg Address didn't become well known until years after Linoln's death. Ward Lamon didn't tell his story until two decades later and we don't why he said it. Maybe no applause sounded like a better story.) The historiography of the Civil War has grown immensely since Foote wrote in the 1950s, so there is not much (if anything) that is useful to a Civil War historian that is working today. A historian working today is not going to cite Foote because we don't what his primary sources, if any, were. (So it's his all opinion or ancedotal, with nothing to support those opinions.) There is a massive amount of secondary sources available that are more reliable and more update than Foote. As said earlier, digitization of archives has been a boon to historians, and history is not written in stone. It is always changing. (They ancient Greeks knew that over a thousand years ago.) Foote was a product of his time. He was usedul for a filmmaker who is more concerned about making an emotional impact on viewers, but not good necessarily good history. That's not a knock on Ken Burns either. Television is different medium that print. Television and film and (to a lesser extent video) deal in emotion. They can't go into the subtleties and depth in film or television than you can in a book. It is not the best source for learning history, but it is a good gateway to get you those sources.
@@bwmwm He's a writer writing about history, but he's not a historian. What are his sources? Where is his research? What are his stories based on? Does he use a lot of primary or only secondary sources? How does he interpret those sources? Is it based on good, logical analysis, cross-checked with other sources? Or is it based on limited sources with superficial analysis? Good prose and a folksy personality don't necessarily make him a historian. As I said earlier, you can enjoy his books (they're great for somebody who wants to read about the Civil War but doesn't want to go too in-depth) but realize they're dated and may not necessarily be based on good analysis.
Yeah, sure; he spent three decades writing the definitive narrative of the Civil War but neah he was just dabbling …….
Shelby Foote contributed an extensive history of the American Civil War and he was an engaging interview. His languid southern drawl was almost hypnotic but I disagree with Ken Burns’ contention that Mr. Foote did not have a Southern bias. As Gary Gallagher points out Shelley Foote did a great deal to articulate the Lost Cause perspective in recent times, a path toward Confederate absolution much like the Good Wehrmacht attempts to absolve many German soldiers after WW2.
Agreed.
Ken Burns needs to read Footes Wikipedia page, after he died, he was buried right next to the family plot of Nathan Forrest, one of the founders of the Klan.
Foote was a Southern sympathizer in every way shape and form
Democrats!!
Yes
I enjoy listening to Shelby, Ken is talented, but I can’t listen to him. Never have, never will.
And Shelby Foote was an apologist for "state's rights" with regard to the Civil War. Not slavery. And slavery is what the Civil War was fought over. 1% of the CSA conned the poor dirt farmer to fight for them.
Causes of the Civil War will depend in part on where you lived. From the North (Lincoln and his cabinet) it was about insurrection against the federal government, maintaining the Union, and the still new Great Experiment of Democracy that was America. Secession, slavery, states rights, etc., were the issues that threatened to destroy that.
BLUF,@@windycityliz7711 it was ALL about slavery.
Then why didn't we have a Civil War in 1800? 1820? etc. @@markbeames7852
@@markbeames7852
ONLY AN IGNORANT UNEDUCATED FOOL BELIEVES
WHAT YOU JUST SPEWED BUT
THERE ARE MILLIONS JUST LIKE YOU SO
YOU LL NEVER BE LONELY 😂
@markbeames7852 Slavery is at its core, but the underlying principles that allowed for slavery and what was seen as radical abolitionists like John Brown being encouraged to murder. Many other states who were skeptical about secession, like Kentucky and Virginia, joined after Sumpter and the calling up of troops, on principle.
Great Civil War toupee.
Investors in Cotton mills in New England wanted Southern Cotton. The Cotton was going to England, which produced a lot of trade goods, some better made or lower cost than goods in New England. The War made cotton a Contraband good subject to piracy. Seized cotton on blockage breakers were sailed to Boston wharfs for auction. One half of the money to the federal government, one fourth each to the ship's captain and ship owner. After the passage of the Intercontinental Railroad Act of 1963, Vanderbilt sold his fleet of sailing ships to the Department of the Navy to tighten the blockade.
The ONLY reason to watch Ken Burn's Civil War documentary is Shelby Foote.
The music.
@@robrussell5329 the reason I started playing the fiddle was to learn Ashokan Farewell after hearing it in the documentary to play as a tribute for my Father-in-Law after he died ... a very moving piece of music.
any college history course on the subject would refute most of Shelby’s contributions to this doc. surprised so many of you were fooled, but I guess he was telling the lies people want to hear when they think back on the “good ole times”
There is no single source of "truth" on any subject, let alone a college history course. Rather we consult a wide variety of primary and secondary sources - even ones you may believe are "lies".
@@windycityliz7711 well college history courses are made up of many sources obviously. that aside, there are tons more sources that contradict Shelby Foote.
Yeah college courses and the truth 😅
You shake your head too much. Easy does it.
Let's get Trump-hating Ken Burns to replace the current Trump-hating chief at NPR! Some of us, who pay federal taxes that go to PBS and NPR, are actually Republicans who support President Trump.
So,you admit you support fascism 🤡
Amen to that, brother!
Funny I don’t remember NPR getting fined $785 million dollars for lying like the Chump propaganda media outlet Fox not News 😝😜🤪🤡🤡🤡
Shelby Foote was not a serious historian. He was a writer of fiction, mostly about subjects in the South. He wrote the famous 3-volume "narrative" of the Civil War that is very readable and entertaining. But it is not first-rate history. Most of its sources were memoirs of Confederate politicians and military men. Colorful anecdotes about "skeered rabbits" do not make for serious history; indeed, Foote never claimed to be a historian. Ken Burns made a mistake in overusing him in his Civil War series. If he truly thinks that Foote did not have a southern bias, he is mistaken. Foote was always ready to drift off into "Lost Cause" mythology and he minimized the role that slavery played as the major cause of the war. He blamed the Civil War on an inability to compromise, much like Donald Trump is currently doing as he claims that he could have made a deal that would have prevented the war if only he had been president in 1860. By 1860, there has been 73 years of compromising, from the Constitutional Convention to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, when the Crittenden Compromise--which would have permanently enshrined slavery in the U.S. Constitution--was proposed in late 1860, after Lincoln's election. President-elect Lincoln urged that it be rejected, as it was completely counter to the platform of the Republican Party on which has been elected. There was no more room for compromise. But all of that didn't matter to Shelby Foote. What was important to him was that the South should have been allowed to maintain its traditional ways, complete with chattel slavery.
Yes, no one should have cared about slavery. The institution of slavery would almost certainly have faded away eventually without any bloodshed, as it did in other places. The problem here is that you people view the institution of slavery as a grave evil. It wasn't particularly heinous at all. It's an antiquated "mode of production."
I think your thesis is seriously flawed. Slavery was, and is, heinous.
The civil war was about money power and control, as always and with everything. Dipping your toe in a river does not make you an expert on its depth. The human connections between “owners” and their “slaves” was much more complex and deeper than people realize. Yes, ownership of another was and is still wrong, but the people of the south lived and died together, some “slaves” were just as much family to the white owners as their own blood family members. Black in the south, if they slaves, were born, lived and died alongside their owners, they cared for each other and trusted each other. Obviously, there were exceptions and abuses occurred, but if you look deeper and research, you’ll find relationships that counter the narrative.
You missed the point of Footes work. It was designed to be a readable history of the civil war, which it was. It wasn’t an exhaustive academic effort, not did it claim to be. As to his skewed views on certain subjects, so what. Every historian has biases that, hopefully, don’t swallow up the work. Foote, in my opinion, did have a nostalgic view of the Old South but did not ignore its serious issues.
Burns is a Trumpster.
Foote knew about the 1st Alabama Cavalry but hid it from Burns whose independent research was shallow and limited. Burns fell victim to the Lost Cause Mythologists and so his Civil War falls short.
Shelby Foote was very good, but fell victim to some Lost Cause nonsense.
How so? Got a quote?
@@shouldhavedonebetter en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_Foote#Scholarly_reception_and_Lost_Cause_controversies
@@shouldhavedonebetter In a 1997 interview with Donald Faulkner and William Kennedy, Foote stated that he would have fought for the Confederacy, and, "What's more, I would fight for the Confederacy today if the circumstances were similar. There's a great deal of misunderstanding about the Confederacy, the Confederate flag, slavery, the whole thing. The political correctness of today is no way to look at the middle of the 19th century. The Confederates fought for some substantially good things. States' rights is not just a theoretical excuse for oppressing people. You have to understand that the raggedy Confederate soldier who owned no slaves and probably couldn't even read the Constitution, let alone understand it, when he was captured by Union soldiers and asked, 'What are you fighting for?' replied, 'I'm fighting because you're down here.' So I certainly would have fought to keep people from invading my native state
@@fullr3t4rd Cutting and pasting a Wikipedia paragraph is not a valid position. It doesn't mean Foote was a 'Lost Cause' apologist. It means he was looking through the lens of a 19th century man, as opposed to a 20th or 21st century man, which is a sign of intelligence, not bigotry. Never have I ever heard Foote say or read anything he's written defend the institution of slavery, or state that the Confederacy had a right to be an independent nation based on that fact - only that he would have fought with his neighbors, as most men did, (William Faulkner implied that same thing - no one would call him a Lost Cause apologist). Slavery was of minor importance to most soldiers in the Civil War. If it were, ardent abolitionists like Robert Gould Shaw and his 54th Massachusetts would have freed slaves in Delaware and Maryland - the Union slave states they traveled through. Lincoln could have had his wife emancipate the slaves she owned. Foote was never a 'Lost Cause' apologist - sympathizing with a soldier's plight and stating that he would have fought for his state doesn't make him so - anymore than an American soldier of any era was anti-this or pro-that.
@@fullr3t4rdTerrific and well justified response here. Not many commenters can back up their assertions as well as you do here. Well done.
I highly doubt that Shelby was woke enough for Ken.
Shelby Foote is an enthusiast not a historian.
Ken Burns is a Propagandist
Too bad Ken Burns took the political route a couple years back. I dont really take a lot of faith in his analysis anymore.
What did he do--say something true about Donald Trump?
@@RANDALLBRIGGS - he’s a political hack.
I gathered he is a Republican, because he recently interview Cassidy Hutchinson and at the end of the interview he said “I hope you remain with the Republican Party.” Now why did he feel the need to say that? That concerned me a little.
I can accept the fact that he might have historically been a republican, but if he still belongs to that party, then shame on him. The republicans have turned into fascists.
@@kaymuldoon3575 You act like voting dem is ok. Its the dems who want to take your property, your guns, your church, your family, your school….not the filthy republicans, who’s real crime is being yellow.
Foote was an apologist, a traitor just like any other.
Of course it was a lost cause. Economically the south wasn’t even close to the north . Population wise the north vastly outnumbered the south. Once the Union got their act together and the great General Grant took over, and the Union finally got a good general, the South got their asses kicked. Grant put excellent generals in charge like Sherman and Sheridan as well. People who think the lost cause is untrue , are living in a fantasy world, and have never read history or the facts or the statistics of how badly the north outnumbered the south in all areas. People from the south who think they had a chance of winning are uneducated fools living in a fantasy world. Give it up, you lost, and you never had a chance.
ol kenny burns.......still pumping peters after all these years.......
Ken Burns will never achieve anything close to the respect which Foote has attained.
Burns will never be anything but a liberal yes man for PBS.
Foote is a factual historian.