Tony Horwitz standing at a wooden fence.
tonyhorwitz.com
In the wake of the June 2015 murder of nine African Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston by a white supremacist—and the subsequent (and successful) push for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse—I had a decision to make. It seemed obvious that the Monitor must cover the event and the backlash against Confederate symbols it almost instantly spurred. But whatever we did had to be thoughtful and judicious, its analysis firmly grounded in historical context—unlike so much of the reportage at the time. Who could take on that assignment? The answer was clear. I emailed Tony Horwitz.
It wasn’t my first correspondence with Tony. In the late 1990s, after reading his book Confederates in the Attic—a fascinating and often laugh-out-loud funny account of his travels below the Mason–Dixon line to assess the complicated legacy of the Civil War in the modern-day South—I sent him a note expressing my deep appreciation of his keen insights into the nature of America’s enduring North–South divide (something I was navigating at the time as a Yankee who had recently moved to South Carolina). To my amazement, Tony, who undoubtedly received hundreds of similar messages from equally unfamiliar admirers, responded almost immediately—a pattern that he’d repeat without fail over the years—with an email that read like a message to an old friend.
So when I emailed Tony in 2015, I wasn’t surprised to hear from him right away. Thankfully, he accepted the task, and we published his thoughts on the burgeoning controversy over the Confederate battle flag—which I still consult from time to time—in our Fall 2015 issue. Before long, Tony started research on another big book project—he was prolific in the post-Attic years, writing on a variety of subjects that included Captain James Cook and the abolitionist John Brown—this one about the famed American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who undertook a lengthy excursion through the South in the 1850s. Tony followed Olmsted’s path, and wrote, incisively as ever, about his experiences on the road in the resulting book, Spying on the South, published in May 2019.
In my last email to Tony, I asked if he’d be interested in taking part in a Q&A about Spying on the South for the Monitor. Within hours, I had his response: If he could have a few weeks to work up answers, he’d be happy to do so. Four days later, Tony died unexpectedly. He was just 60 years old.
Tony will be sorely missed by many, including those of us who came to admire—and even depend on—his clever and witty takes on the complex legacy of the Civil War. I will never forget his generosity, his professionalism, or his exceptional ability to tie the lessons of history to the present times.
