16. Gone with the Wind changed the perception of the South
In 1936 Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, a novel supporting the concepts of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, was released. It was the most popular work of fiction in the United States for the next two years, and has sold over 30 million copies since. Its depiction of the history of the antebellum South and the Civil War, as well as Reconstruction, is a summation of the Lost Cause, using fiction to depict history. For many of its fans, it changed how the institution of slavery was perceived. In the novel, the slaves owned by the families of the great plantations were invariably loyal, faithful, and proud of their positions within the plantation hierarchy.
The southern soldiers were knightly, their enemies beastly. Those who betrayed the Southern cause, or who profited from it (such as Rhett Butler) were scoundrels. Mitchell used the word scallawag (sic) to describe them, though scalawag was actually a term used for southerners who accepted Reconstruction after the war. According to one reviewer of a later edition of the book, Pat Conroy, Mitchell reduced the Ku Klux Klan to, “…a benign combination of the Elks Club and a men’s equestrian society”. Gone with the Wind distorted the history of the American Civil War both as a novel and in the subsequent film. It remains an example of the revision of history known as the Lost Cause, of which Mitchell was a product.