In 1998, the author Tony Horwitz visited Foote for his book "Confederates in the Attic", a meeting in which Foote declared he was "dismayed" by the "behavior of blacks, who are fulfilling every dire prophesy the Ku Klux Klan made", and that African Americans were "acting as if the utter lie about blacks being somewhere between ape and man were true". Foote emphasized that his loyalties during the 1860s would have been to white Southerners: "I’d be with my people, right or wrong." Foote also argued that freedmen had led to the failure of Reconstruction and that the Confederate flag represented "law, honour, love of country." Foote stated that he would have been willing to fight to maintain slavery: "If I was against slavery, I'd still be with the South. I'm a man, my society needs me, here I am."