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Overall Summary
Confederates in the Attic is a non-fiction book written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tony Horwitz. The book is about his travels through the deep south and interviews with people who live there, as well as visiting Civil War battlefields, museums, and monuments to understand why they are so fascinated with this period of American history.
Horwitz’s narrative is organized around the states he visited, rather than focusing on a central argument. He also chose to discuss his entire visit with one state in each section before moving on to another. The book can be thought of as like a bicycle wheel where “the South” sits at the center and individual spokes are attached to it representing different states that are similar but not identical.
By dividing “Confederates in the Attic” into fifteen chapters that focus on separate Southern states, Horwitz is able to highlight the differences between each state and its people. The reader begins to understand that though most people may think of the South as a singular entity, it’s actually made up of many different locales with their own unique customs and traditions. However, what becomes clear throughout this book are themes like nostalgia, family, land, loss and heritage—themes that serve to bind together white Southerners who have experienced displacement.
In this book, the author speaks with white Southerners about their views on race. He contrasts those ideas with African Americans’ opinions of race in the South. The topics that he covers include confederate memorials, flying flags and racial integration during the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. The author doesn’t shy away from controversy or bluntness when it comes to his subjects’ honesty and frankness about their beliefs.
The author, a southerner himself, traveled around the south and interviewed people about their way of thinking. He then explains what he learned from those interviews in his book Confederates in the Attic.
Chapter 1: “Confederates in the Attic”
The author opens his book with a story about his grandfather, Isaac Moses Perski. His grandfather fled Czarist Russia as a teenager and arrived in Manhattan to begin a new life in America. He had an odd fascination with the American Civil War, so he purchased “The Photographic History of the Civil War” even though he was poor at that time. This curiosity inspired Horwitz’s own interest in this conflict.
After returning to the US after living in another country, Horwitz and his wife moved into a house near the Blue Ridge Mountains. One morning, they were woken up by rifle fire from a Civil War reenactment. This coincidental event led him to encounter hardcore Civil War reenactors who invited him to go with them on an outing. He accepted their offer and spent a night “spooning” out in the woods trying to recreate what it was like for soldiers during that time period. It was then that he met Robert Lee Hodge, one of the main recurring figures present throughout his study tour of the South.
Chapter 2: “North Carolina Cats in the Confederacy”
Horwitz begins his journey in North Carolina, which is described as a “veil of humility” between two mounds of conceit. He then goes on to tour a Civil War cemetery with an African-American man who was surprised at the lack of other African Americans living in the area. After that he attends a meeting where people try to prove their knowledge about obscure facts about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, two Confederate generals from the Civil War era.
Horwitz continues his journey through the South, and he comes across an organization called “Children of the Confederacy” which is a group that teaches children about Confederate culture. He also encounters other groups with ties to the Confederacy such as Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy. Horwitz then travels to North Carolina where he goes to a service honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, which presents him with many different people from different backgrounds who have strong beliefs in their own ways.
