We hear much these days about how history should be taught. Although the Civil War was fought and supposedly ended 160 years ago, after the last cannon was shot and formal surrender was signed, a new war began. We are living through it still.
Forgive me for quoting William Faulkner once again, but he said it so well, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The past may not be dead, but there were definitely efforts to bury it, and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author, Howell Raines, set about over six decades to un-bury some of that past, resulting in his most recent book, SILENT CAVALRY: HOW UNION SOLDIERS FROM ALABAMA HELPED SHERMAN BURN ATLANTA – AND THEN GOT WRITTEN OUT OF HISTORY, published by Crown.
Howell Raines was born in Birmingham, AL in 1943, and as you will hear, his people go way back in the hill country of northern Alabama. You can be forgiven for not knowing that they voted not to secede from the union during the Civil War, and that they were mocked with the moniker “THE FREE STATE OF WINSTON.” They had hoped to be neutral and left alone by both the Union & the Confederacy, but when the latter legislated the first military conscription in our country’s history, and ruthlessly hounded the 22 counties of northern Alabama to purloin their young men, thousands of them fled north and volunteered for the Union army, where they were formed into the bi-racial 1st Alabama Cavalry, and served with distinction. Howell Raines documents the significant role they played in restoring our union, as well as the collusion between northern and southern elites to erase their story.
Howell Raines began his journalism career, 60 years ago as a reporter for the Birmingham Post-Herald. In 1971 he became the political editor of the Atlanta Constitution. He became the NYT national correspondent based in Atlanta in 1979, becoming the Times editorial page editor in 1993 in New York City, where he was known for “the aggressive, colloquial style of his editorials.”
His books include a novel, WHISKEY MAN, set in Depression era Alabama and based roughly on his own family history; and an oral history of the civil-rights movement, MY SOUL IS RESTED: MOVEMENT DAYS IN THE DEEP SOUTH REMEMBERED.
We spoke with him via Skype on January 22, 2024.
‘History is not what happened’: Howell Raines on the civil war and memory https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/27/howell-raines-silent-cavalry-civil-war?ref=upstract.com
Longstreet: the Confederate general who switched sides on race https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/03/longstreet-confederate-general-book-elizabeth-varon
Stars Fell on Alabama · Louis Armstrong · Ella Fitzgerald https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4Xr4DZudpE
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