DAVID SCHMADER WROTE:

Novelist, scholar, and preeminent Civil War historian Shelby Foote has died. He was pretty old, so it’s not a tragedy, but commemoration is in order. As anyone who’s seen all 700 hours of Ken Burns’ PBS documentary The Civil War (for which Foote was a key featured commentator) can attest, Shelby Foote was a superstaras adorable as Webster, as smart as shit.

I was such a huge fan of Shelby Foote after watching the Civil War miniseries. Then I asked my UVA history major friend and high school hero Grau about him and Grau said, “As far as I’m concerned, he was the worst bastard in Virginia. In all of academia, in fact.”

I just like the way he said “Shiloh.”