Gone: A Photographic Plea for Preservation

Shelby Foote · Robert Hicks

Apr 2011 · BelleBooks

About this ebook

Photographer and architect Nell Dickerson began her exploration of antebellum homesteads with encouragement from her cousin-in-law renowned Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote. Her passion for forgotten and neglected buildings became a plea for preservation. Gone is a unique pairing of modern photographs and historical novella. In PILLAR OF FIRE, Foote offers a heartbreaking look at one mans loss as Union troops burn his home in the last days of the Civil War. Dickerson shares fascinating and haunting photographs, shining a poignant light on the buildings which survived Sherman's burning rampage across the Confederacy, only to fall victim to neglect, apathy and poverty.

From the photographer:
The Civil War had been over for exactly ninety years in 1954, when my cousin, Shelby Foote, published--PILLAR OF FIRE--as part of his novel, Jordan County: A Landscape in Narrative. The book's stories painted a vivid picture of a fictitious Mississippi county steeped in Southern culture.

PILLAR OF FIRE took readers into a heartbreaking and commonplace scene late in the Civil War, when Union troops moved through the civilian South destroying not only plantations but also ordinary homes and cabins. Those troops, battle-hardened and bitter from the loss of their own brethren, take no joy in burning a home in front of its dying, elderly owner and his frail servants. The cruelty of the circumstances is as much a given for them as the dying man's grief over all the memories that burn with his house.

Now, on the eve of the Civil War's 150th commemoration, my mission is to draw attention not only to the architectural heritage devastated by the war but also the heritage we've lost since then: to neglect, to poverty, and to shame, as the war's infamy colored the attitudes of later generations and tainted the homes those generations inherited. What the war didn't take, time and apathy did. And yet those grand old homes whether mansion or cabin deserve our reverence and protection.

Ratings and reviews

typical foote very good

About the author

Author and historian Shelby Foote was born in Greenville, Mississippi on November 17, 1916. He was educated at the University of North Carolina and served with the U.S. Army artillery during World War II. He was dismissed in 1944 for using a government vehicle against regulations. He later enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, but did not see active duty. After being discharged from the military, he briefly became a journalist. He has written short stories, plays, and longer works, but is best known for his three-volume narrative history of the Civil War. He was awarded Guggenheim fellowships in 1958, 1959, and 1960, a Ford Foundation grant in 1963, and the Dos Passos Prize for Literature in 1988. In 2003, Foote received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The Helmerich Award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust. He appeared in Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Civil War. He died at home in Memphis, Tennessee, on June 27, 2005 due to a heart attack. He was interred in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.