Week 10

Gone With the Wind. Courtesy of Bernews.

This weeks reading was to finish Horiwitz’s “Confederates in the Attic.”  In chapter 11 Gone With the Window Horwitz visits Atlanta and realizes just how different Atlanta is from other Southern cities.  Atlanta was constantly remaking itself after the Civil War so much that there are no antebellum buildings standing and the battlefields are in poor condition if they are there at all.  “Whatever history Atlanta couldn’t tear down, it bobbed around, lest any ugly blot from the past mar the city’s reputation.” (285) Horiwitz also looks at how the movie Gone With the Wind kept the Civil War alive and peoples continued fascination with the movie. 

            In chapter 12 Still Prisoners of the War Horowitz visits Conyers, Georgia and talks to Mauriel Joslyn about wartime diaries and letters from Confederate who were captured during the war.  Many of the Confederate soldiers who were captured and shipped to Northern prison camps would write to Northern women.  Horiwitz then looks into the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville and how the man who ran the camp, Henry Wirz was hanged as a war criminal, the only man charged in American history.  Both Confederate and Union prison camps had high death rates due to starvation and disease. 

Andersonville Prison Camp. Courtesy of Civil War Home

            Chapter 13 Only Living Confederate Widow Tells Some looks at Alberta Martin, who was the last surviving widow of a confederate soldier.  Mrs. Martin married William Jasper Martin, a Confederate veteran, when she was in her twenties and William Martin was eighty.  A little over a year after they married he died and she remarried.  Horiwitz questioned Mrs. Martin about her husband and his experience in the war, but she remembered little about his and he never spoke about his time as a soldier. 

Alberta Martin. Courtesy of Sons of Confederate Veterans

            Chapter 14 I Had A Dream Horiwitz visits Montgomery, Alabama and notices how both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement are at the forefront in the city and they are intertwined.  In chapter 15 Strike the Tent Horiwitz goes to Gettysburg for another march with Rob Hodge and afterwards finally returns home after his long journey.