The Toy Soldier: Remembering Shelby Foote

Written By Troop Brenegar

For those who don’t know, today is an important day for the South, as it marks the 20th anniversary of the passing of our greatest and most beloved historian, Shelby Foote. To express in detail the significance of the contributions he made in his life to the South and her collective memory would be impossible. Yet, Virginia Gentry Magazine could not allow this day to pass by without saying something of the great man. I was struggling to determine what exactly our epitaph to him would be when a friend reached out with this beautiful anecdote about his experience with the great Shelby Foote, and I knew as soon as I read it that this would be it.

— J.R. Dunmore, EIC, Virginia Gentry Magazine

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Shelby Foote sitting at his desk.

“Did you remember the books?”

“No.”

“I told you to remember them. Now we won’t get an autograph.”

I was embarrassed. I looked out the Volvo window at the rock face flitting by yards away. I tried to think only of the striated drill holes, where charges laid bare the mountain. I counted, skipping every other one, to see if the number was even or odd. I hadn’t meant to forget the three thick volumes; I simply had other things on my mind. We were traveling to see an old man, a stranger, and I had something to give him, after all; perhaps I wasn’t thinking about taking something from him. But I was twelve and did not consider this. Embarrassment gave way to disappointment. I should have done better.

But nothing else about the books was said the rest of the trip over the mountains out of North Carolina into Tennessee and then Virginia. Gradually I forgot. I watched the mountains go by and even read a book. Dad switched on the radio. Dean Smith had just announced his retirement from Chapel Hill. The laud continued as Kentucky hills turned gold. Dad and I arrived at his friend’s house in Lexington well after dark.

The next day was hot for October. We drove over to Transylvania University and were herded into an unoccupied classroom, the bright afternoon sun pouring in. There we waited in audience with many others. They were mostly men, carrying notepads or cameras or, my embarrassment reminded, those massive hardback volumes. I was the only youth there.

At last, the entourage entered. There was murmuring and the snap of cameras. And then I saw him. He was smaller and older than I imagined.

“It’s been a long, hot trip, no autographs today,” announced the faculty ringleader. Aha! My adolescent ineptitude vindicated. Innumerable questions were fielded by the audience, none of which I cared about at the time. I had a single mission, wrapped in a tiny paperboard box in my hands: I had to give him this toy soldier.

Starting at eight, I had begun to make my own toy soldiers. In those days, miniatures companies advertised in magazines like Civil War Times Illustrated. One would write off and weeks later, a “catalog” of xeroxed 8.5x11 sheets appeared the mail. I spent hours pouring over the listings. The Napoleonic miniatures were handsome, but it was The War that absorbed all my boyhood attention and with these soldiers it could be no different. My allowance dispatched, a package returned a few weeks later and I began the arcane art of melting ingots of metal on an electric coil stove. The alloy would turn bright and glossy in the precariously balanced ladle; then it grew a skin and was ready. Pour the liquid silver down into a rubber mold caked with talcum powder and wait. Once cool to the touch, pop open the mold and there was a soldier, shining raw.

The work had only begun, though. Cutting, filing, priming, painting: it was slow going and my ambitions of recreating the Stonewall Brigade to the man seemed to recede into adulthood. But I got better and better at it and when Dad told me who we were going to see in Kentucky, I knew what I must do. I chose a soldier biting a cartridge, ready to pour the powder down his rifle barrel. His coat and cap were gray, for as Southern boy to Southern man, I could do no else. But I painted his pants blue, either out of fidelity to regulations or just the fact that he had stolen them from a bluebelly. That soldier was waiting in my hand.

The questions ended and the audience rushed the old man at the front. “Go, get up there,” said Dad. I slipped between the adults and arrived at the table where he sat. He turned to me, tired but calm, inquisitive as to what I was doing there.

“No autographs,” said the handler.

I pressed the box forward. “This is for you.”

He ignored the hangers-on and opened the box. A faint smile crossed his face. “Well, a Union soldier. Thank you.”

Tongue-tied, I did not think to correct him. I do not remember if either of us said anything else. Then the crowd swallowed up around him and I backed away, my deed done.

We returned that night to the fine arts center for his speech. This was a more formal, collegial event than the pell-mell of the afternoon. When he appeared on stage, the old man seemed refreshed, fully the stoic with the twinkling mischief in his eye known to the public. There were the requisite introductions and applause, followed by the keynote address: “The Civil War: Values and Virtues Learned.” I don’t recall a thing about the speech itself. After he spoke, there was an intermission while they prepared for a panel discussion. And he was just standing on that stage alone, hands clasped behind his back, waiting patiently. I blurted out, “I’d like to ask him a question.”

“Go ask him,” said my dad.

I vacillated. I was painfully shy and didn’t want to embarrass myself.

“This is your only chance. If you don’t go ask him, you’ll always regret it.”

So I set off down the aisle. I ascended the stage and approached him. “I have a question.”

He accepted my imposition graciously, as if I were a peer.

“Do you think the Confederacy would have ended slavery?”

He shook his head. “No, no, they were not capable of an act of emancipation.”

I couldn’t even make eye contact with him. The man with the golden voice was answering my deepest questions about the struggle that absorbed all my youthful thought. “Even if it would have ended the war?”

He elaborated further and my young mind struggled to keep up. But he summed it up for me: “As much as they may have wanted to, the domestic situation simply would not permit it.”

“Oh, okay. That was what I wanted to know. Thank you.”

I disappeared from the stage and returned to my seat. The evening continued, but I remember nothing. Only a great relief — joy, even — at having gotten the truth from the unimpeachable authority himself.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived, addressed in gothic ballpoint handwriting. It had a 32 cent Robert E. Lee stamp and a Memphis postmark. On a single sheet of lined paper, the following was written:

Memphis, 11 Nov 97

Dear Troop Brenegar, I’m writing belatedly to thank you for the cartridge-biting lead soldier you gave me in late October. Seeing first his blue trousers and blue cuffs on his jacket, I said he was either a Yankee or had taken a uniform off a northern corpse. Now at home, and with my glasses on, I can see plainly that he is indeed a Confederate, and I’m writing to thank you for him. He’s right here on my desk, still biting the cartridge as a preparation for drawing a bead on whatever comes at him.

I do indeed thank you, and wish you well through all those years stretching out before you.

With best wishes, Shelby Foote

If you would like to read more of

Troop Brenegar

’s work, you can find his excellent debut novel here.

His X account here.

His personal website here, and his Substack below:

https://www.booksbytroop.com/p/books