28 Quotes by Tony Horwitz

Andersonville lay on American soil and saw the death of 13,000 Americans in American custody.

Was there such a thing as politically correct remembrance of the Confederacy? Or was any attempt to honor the Cause inevitably tainted by what Southernerners once delicately referred to as their 'peculiar institution?

This may sound sexist,' Joslyn said, 'but my theory is that men like the Civil War because it's an action story, they're caught up in the battlefield drama. The prisoners are an emotional side of the War. Women are attracted to all that raw feeling, we understand it better....

For [Beth] Davis, Fitzgerald's [Louisiana] story carried another, broader message for Americans. 'If veterans could come together so soon after the War and forgive and forget, then surely we can overcome our differences,' she said. 'Old wounds were healed here, old barriers overcome. Seems like we should be able to do the same.

For Robert Lee Hodge, it was also a way of life. As the Marlon Brando of battlefield bloating, he was often hired for Civil War movies.

We're not migrating people,' she said. 'We live in our old houses, and eat on our old dishes and use our old silverware everyday. We're close to the past and comfortable with it. We've surrounded our lives with the pictures of all our relatives hanging on the walls, and we grow up hearing stories about them. It gives these things personality beyond just the material they're made of.

We've always lived in the past in Selma, and we still do. But the past has changed on us. It included a lot of stories it didn't used to.

Even aimless journeys have a purpose...

I am an agnostic on most matters of faith, but on the subjects of maps I have always been a true believer. It is on the map, therefore it is, and I am.