Over the next few years he was a prominent leader in ending the reconstruction in Mississippi.

However, he retired soon after as a protest to the new reconstruction policies. After the war, he moved to Columbus where he became a Circuit Court Judge.

Although he opposed secession very much, he was loyal to the Confederacy and served as an officer at Shiloh and other battles. By 1861 he owned one hundred slaves and cultivated over one thousand acres. He studied law, became a clerk of the Circuit Court, and prospered as a planter. The Foote family can be traced back several generations starting with Shelby Foote’s great grandfather Hezekiah William Foote, who settled, not in the Delta, but in Noxubee County near Macon. Not only do they appear as elements for his fiction, they also “exemplify what he sees as the classic Delta aristocracy, providing the grounding of Foote’s treatment of the Civil War” (White 14). The details of Foote’s family background, although looked at with a clear perspective which is different from the sentimental, often gossipy, geneologizing common among most good southern families, is directly related to Foote’s work. Shelby Foote’s ancestors also created exciting elements for his fiction and influenced his work.

There was definitely much to write about, having lived in the heart of the South where cotton plantations thrived, where the depression hit hard, and where the prospect and excitement of war was always in the air. Born during the Jazz age when money was abundant, and growing up during the Great Depression when money was scarce, Shelby Foote experienced many changes that greatly influenced his ideas and writings.

Shelby foote stars in their courses