Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that this
year marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Margaret
Mitchell’s Civil War epic, Gone with the Wind. The book and its
characters are being celebrated and discussed around the world.
From Atlanta to Calcutta, people have weighed in on why they
like the book, how many times they’ve read it, and how it has
influenced their lives. Aside from the personal connections
readers have made with the book and its characters, however,
Gone with the Wind’s most enduring legacy has been in shaping a
popular understanding of the Old South and the Civil War. From
the beginning, fans have accepted as truth the book’s Lost Cause
narrative of the pre-Civil War South as a region gilded by
romance and whose cast of characters included cavaliers, belles,
mansions, and of course, loyal slaves. Yet it is fair to say
that the film, more than the book, has influenced this popular
view of the southern past. Even Margaret Mitchell called this
one. Indeed, a few years a