In a 2011 commentary, Ta-Nehisi Coates concluded that Foote was not guilty of "neo-Confederate apologia." However, Foote "gave twenty years of his life, and three volumes of important and significant words to the Civil War, but he could never see himself in the slave. He could not get that the promise of free bread can not cope with the promise of free hands. Shelby Foote wrote "The Civil War", but he never understood it. Understanding the Civil War was a luxury his whiteness could ill-afford."