Shelby Foote Shelby Dade Foote , Jr . ( November 17 , 1916 – June 27 , 2005 ) was an American historian and novelist who wrote " " , a massive , three - volume history of the war . With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta , Foote ' s life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the Old South to the Civil Rights era of the New South . Foote was relatively unknown to the general public for most of his life until his appearance in Ken Burns ' s PBS documentary " The Civil War " in 1990 , where he introduced a generation of Americans to a war that he believed was " central to all our lives . " Early life . Foote was born in Greenville , Mississippi , the son of Shelby Dade Foote , and his wife , Lillian ( Rosenstock ) . Foote ' s paternal grandfather , a planter , had gambled away most of his fortune and assets . His maternal grandfather was a Jewish immigrant from Vienna . Foote was raised in his father ' s and maternal grandmother ' s Episcopalian faith . As his father advanced through the executive ranks of Armour and Company , the family lived in Greenville , Jackson , and Vicksburg , Mississippi , as well as Pensacola , Florida and Mobile , Alabama . Foote ' s father died in Mobile when Foote was five years old ; he and his mother moved back to Greenville . Foote was an only child , and his mother never remarried . When Foote was 15 years old , Walker Percy and his brothers LeRoy and Phinizy Percy moved to Greenville to live with their uncle — attorney , poet , and novelist William Alexander Percy — after the death of their parents . Foote began a lifelong fraternal and literary relationship with Walker ; each had great influence on the other ' s writing . Foote edited " The Pica , " the student newspaper of Greenville High School , and frequently used the paper to lampoon the school ' s principal . In 1935 , Foote applied to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , hoping to join with the older Percy boys , but was denied admission because of an unfavorable recommendation from his high school principal . He presented himself for admission anyway , and as result of a battery of admissions tests , he was accepted . In 1936 he was initiated in the Alpha Delta chapter of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity . Interested more in the process of learning than in earning an actual degree , Foote was not a model student . He often skipped class to explore the library , and once he even spent the night among the shelves . He also began contributing pieces of fiction to " Carolina Magazine " , UNC ' s award - winning literary journal . Foote returned to Greenville in 1937 , where he worked in construction and for a local newspaper , " The Delta Democrat Times " . Around this time , he began to work on his first novel . In 1940 Foote joined the Mississippi National Guard and was commissioned as captain of artillery . After being transferred from one stateside base to another , his battalion was deployed to Northern Ireland in 1943 . The following year , Foote was charged with falsifying a government document relating to the check - in of a motor pool vehicle he had borrowed to visit a girlfriend in Belfast — later his first wife — who lived two miles beyond the official military limits . He was court - martialed and dismissed from the Army . He came back to the United States and took a job with the Associated Press in New York City . In January 1945 , he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps , but was discharged as a private in November 1945 , never having seen combat . During his training with the Marines , he recalled a fellow Marine asking him " you used to be a [ n ] Army captain , didn ' t you ? " When Foote said yes , the fellow replied , " You ought to make a pretty good Marine private . " Foote returned to Greenville and took a job with a local radio station , but spent most of his time writing . He sent a section from his first novel to the " Saturday Evening Post " . " Flood Burial " was published in 1946 , and when Foote received a $ 750 check from the " Post " as payment , he quit his job to write full - time . Novelist . Foote ' s first novel , " Tournament " , was published in 1949 . It was inspired by his planter grandfather , who had died two years before Foote ' s birth . For his next novel , " Follow Me Down " , ( 1950 ) Foote drew heavily from the proceedings of a Greenville murder trial he attended in 1941 for both the plot and characters . " Love in a Dry Season " was his attempt to deal with the " so - called upper classes of the Mississippi Delta " around the time of the Great Depression . Foote often expressed great affection for this novel , which was published in 1951 . In " Shiloh " ( 1952 ) Foote foreshadows his use of historical narrative as he tells the story of the bloodiest battle in American history to that point from the first - person perspective of seven different characters . Actually , the narrative is presented by 17 characters - Confederate soldiers Metcalf , Dade , and Polly ; and Union soldiers Fountain , Flickner , with each of the twelve named soldiers in the Indiana squad given one section of that chapter . A close reading of this work reveals a very complete interlocked picture of the characters connecting with each other ( Union with Union , Confederate with Confederate ) . " Jordan County : A Landscape in Narrative " , was published in 1954 and is a collection of novellas , short stories , and sketches from Foote ' s mythical Mississippi county . " September , September " ( 1978 ) is the story of three white Southerners who plot and kidnap the 8 - year - old son of a wealthy African - American , told against the backdrop of Memphis in September , 1957 . Although he was not one of America ' s best - known fiction writers , Foote was admired by his peers — among them the aforementioned Walker Percy , Eudora Welty , and his literary hero William Faulkner , who once told a University of Virginia class that Foote " shows promise , if he ' ll just stop trying to write Faulkner , and will write some Shelby Foote . " Foote ' s fiction was recommended by both " The New Yorker " and critics from the " New York Times " book magazine . Historian . Foote moved to Memphis in 1952 . Upon completion of " Jordan County : A Landscape in Narrative " , he resumed work on what he thought would be his magnum opus , " Two Gates to the City " , an epic work he ' d had in mind for years and in outline form since the spring of 1951 . He had trouble making progress and felt he was plunging toward crisis with the " dark , horrible novel . " Unexpectedly , he received a letter from Bennett Cerf of Random House asking him to write a short history of the Civil War to appear for the conflict ' s centennial . According to Foote , Cerf contacted him based on the factual accuracy and rich detail he found in " Shiloh " , but Walker Percy ' s wife Bunt recalled that Walker had contacted Random House to approach Foote . Regardless , though Foote had no formal training as a historian , Cerf offered him a contract for a work of approximately 200 , 000 words . Foote worked for several weeks on an outline and decided that his plan couldn ' t be done to Cerf ' s specifications . He requested that the project be expanded to three volumes of 500 , 000 to 600 , 000 words each , and he estimated that the entire project would be done in nine years . Upon approval for the new plan , Foote commenced writing the comprehensive three volume , 3000 - page history , together entitled " " . The individual volumes are " Fort Sumter to Perryville " ( 1958 ) , " Fredericksburg to Meridian " ( 1963 ) , and " Red River to Appomattox " ( 1974 ) . Foote supported himself during the twenty years he worked on the narrative with Guggenheim Fellowship s ( 1955 – 1957 ) , Ford Foundation grants , and loans from Walker Percy . Foote labored to maintain his objectivity in the narrative despite his Southern upbringing . He deliberately avoided Lost Cause mythologizing in his work . He gained immense respect for such disparate figures as Ulysses Grant , William T . Sherman , Patrick Cleburne , Edwin Stanton and Jefferson Davis . By contrast , he grew to dislike such figures as Phil Sheridan and Joe Johnston . He considered United States President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest to be two authentic geniuses of the war . When he stated this opinion in conversation with one of General Forrest ' s granddaughters , she replied after a pause , " You know , we never thought much of Mr . Lincoln in my family . " The work received generally favorable reviews , though scholars criticized Foote for not including footnotes and for neglecting subjects such as economics and politics of the Civil War era . Later life . After finishing " September , September " , Foote resumed work on " Two Gates to the City " , the novel he had set aside in 1954 to write the Civil War trilogy . The work still gave him trouble and he set it aside once more , in the summer of 1978 , to write " Echoes of Shiloh " , an article for " National Geographic Magazine " . By 1981 , he had given up on " Two Gates " altogether , though he told interviewers for years afterward that he continued to work on it . In the late 1980s , Ken Burns had assembled a group of consultants to interview for his Civil War documentary . Foote was not in this initial group , though Burns had Foote ' s trilogy on his reading list . A phone call from Robert Penn Warren prompted Burns to contact Foote . Burns and crew traveled to Memphis in 1986 to film an interview with Foote in the anteroom of his study . In November 1986 , Foote figured prominently at a meeting of dozens of consultants gathered to critique Burns ' script . Burns interviewed Foote on - camera in Memphis and Vicksburg in 1987 . In 1987 , he became a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga . When Burns ' documentary aired in September , 1990 , Foote appeared in almost ninety segments , about one hour of the eleven - hour series . Foote ' s drawl , erudition , and quirk of speaking as if the war were still going on made him a favorite . He was described as " the toast of Public TV , " " the media ' s newest darling , " and " prime time ' s newest star , " and the result was a burst of book sales . In one week at the end of September , 1990 , each volume of the paperback " The Civil War : A Narrative " sold 1 , 000 copies per day . By the middle of 1991 , Random House had sold 400 , 000 copies of the trilogy . Foote later told Burns , " Ken , you ' ve made me a millionaire . " Foote ' s substantive commentary in the Burns film dealt with a wide variety of battles , characters military and civilian , and issues . He also explained a puzzling question on nomenclature : why does the same battle often have two names ? Foote ' s answer : Northerners are usually from cities , so rivers and streams are noteworthy ; whereas Southerners are usually rural , so they find towns noteworthy . Some examples : Foote professed to be a reluctant celebrity . When " The Civil War " was first broadcast , his telephone number was publicly listed and he received many phone calls from people who had seen him on television . Foote never unlisted his number , and the volume of calls increased each time the series re - aired . Many Memphis natives were known to pay Foote a visit at his East Parkway residence in Midtown Memphis . Horton Foote , the playwright and screenwriter ( " To Kill A Mockingbird , Baby the Rain Must Fall and Tender Mercies " ) was the voice of Jefferson Davis in the PBS series . The two Footes are third cousins ; their great - grandfathers were brothers . " And while we didn ' t grow up together , we have become friends ; I was the voice of Jefferson Davis in that TV series , " Horton Foote added proudly . In 1992 , Foote received an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina . In the early 1990s , Foote was interviewed by journalist Tony Horwitz for the project on American memory of the Civil War which Horwitz eventually published as " Confederates In The Attic " ( 1998 ) . Foote was also a member of The Modern Library ' s editorial board for the re - launch of the series in the mid - 1990s . ( This series published two books excerpted from his Civil War narrative . Foote also contributed a long introduction to their edition of Stephen Crane ' s " The Red Badge of Courage " giving a narrative biography of the author . ) Foote was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994 . Also in 1994 , Foote joined Protect Historic America and was instrumental in opposing a Disney theme park near battlefield sites in Virginia . Along the way , Burns asked him to return for his upcoming documentary " Baseball " , where he appeared in both the 2nd Inning discussing his recollections of the dynamics of the crowds in his youth and in the 10th Inning ( TV series ) , where he gave an account of his meeting Babe Ruth . In one of his last television projects , Foote narrated the three - part series " The 1840 Carolina Village " , produced by award - winning PBS and Travel Channel producer C . Vincent Shortt in 1997 . " Working with Shelby was a genuinely illuminating and humbling experience " , said Shortt . " He was the kind of academician who could weave a Civil War story into a discussion about fried green tomatoes — and do so without an ounce of presumption or arrogance . He was a treasure . " On September 2 , 2001 Shelby Foote was the focus of the C - SPAN television program " In - Depth " . In a 3 hour interview , conducted by C - SPAN founder Brian Lamb , Foote shows off the library of his home , working room , writing desk and details the writing of his books as well as taking on - air calls . The program can be viewed online here : http : / / www . c - spanvideo . org / program / 165823 - 1 In 2003 , Foote received the Peggy V . Helmerich Distinguished Author Award . The Helmerich Award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust . Foote died at Baptist Hospital in Memphis on June 27 , 2005 , aged 88 . He had had a heart attack after a recent pulmonary embolism . He was interred in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis . His grave is beside the family plot of General Forrest . Bibliography . Non - fiction . Titles excerpted from " The Civil War : A Narrative " . These two books published by the Modern Library are excerpted from the three - volume narrative . The former was a whole chapter in the second volume , and the latter excerpted from the second volume where some material was interspersed with other events . Both were also presented as unabridged audio books read by the author . The footnote on p . 95 of " Beleaguered City " is original . It follows the words " Porter fortified a nearby Indian mound " which appear on p . 210 of the Civil War narrative volume II . " My father was born in a house later built on this mound , and was buried alongside " his " father in a cemetery less than a quarter mile away . I expect to join them there in the not - too - distant future . . . This , I promise , is not only the first but also the last footnote in this work . – S . F . " ( the ellipsis is in the original ) .