Posted on 07/18/2015 3:27:50 PM PDT by EveningStar
That is an interesting story about the surrogate.
I’ve always been fascinated by that period in history, maybe partly because of seeing the movie when I was so young. Scarlett has always been my favorite female protagonist because of her ability to adapt and her spirit. Actually, those are the characteristics that built this country but are methodically being drummed out of our culture now.
Thanks — I really only know about Sunstein from the occasional articles that I’ve read about him but he seems to fit the stock character of the liberal academic fairly well and that’s mainly what I’m going on. His piece is nicely written and I give him some credit for giving the book a chance. I wonder if he decided to read it with the intent of writing about it afterwards. Now that I think about it, he may have been hoping that the book was really bad, propagandistic, retrograde, racist, etc. to use as a club or jumping off point against the confederate flag. OTOH, that might be being too suspicious.
Margaret Mitchell was a Southerner and a lifelong resident and native of Atlanta, Georgia. She was born in 1900 into a wealthy and politically prominent family. Her father, Eugene Muse Mitchell, was an attorney, and her mother, Mary Isabel “May Belle” (or “Maybelle”) Stephens, was a suffragist. She had two brothers, Russell Stephens Mitchell, who died in infancy in 1894, and Alexander Stephens Mitchell, born in 1896.
Mitchell’s family on her father’s side were descendants of Thomas Mitchell, originally of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who settled in Wilkes County, Georgia in 1777, and served in the American Revolutionary War. Her grandfather, Russell Crawford Mitchell, of Atlanta, enlisted in the Confederate States Army on June 24, 1861 and served in Hood’s Texas Brigade. He was severely wounded at the Battle of Sharpsburg, demoted for ‘inefficiency,’ and detailed as a nurse in Atlanta.[4] After the Civil War, he made a large fortune supplying lumber for the rapid rebuilding of Atlanta. Russell Mitchell had thirteen children from two wives; the eldest was Eugene, who graduated from the University of Georgia Law School.
Mitchell’s maternal great-grandfather Philip Fitzgerald emigrated from Ireland, and eventually settled on a slaveholding plantation near Jonesboro, Georgia, where he had one son and seven daughters with his wife, Elenor. Mitchell’s grandparents, married in 1863, were Annie Fitzgerald and John Stephens, who had also emigrated from Ireland and was a Captain in the Confederate States Army. John Stephens was a prosperous real estate developer after the Civil War and one of the founders of the Gate City Street Railroad (1881), a mule-drawn Atlanta trolley system. John and Annie Stephens had twelve children together; the seventh child was May Belle Stephens, who married Eugene Mitchell.[6][7][8] May Belle Stephens had studied at the Bellevue Convent in Quebec and completed her education at the Atlanta Female Institute.
The Atlanta Constitution reported that May Belle Stephens and Eugene Mitchell were married at the Jackson Street mansion of the bride’s parents on November 8, 1892:
Source: Wikipedia
***
She seemed to have been born to write this book.
“Thinks dixie hates Jews....is ignorant”
I watched a documentary recently and learned that at one point in history Tennessee — I think eastern Tennessee — had the highest percentage of Jewish population in the country. Late 1700s, or early 1800s, I think.
‘Gone with the Wind’ was published in 1936 and the Civil War ended in 1865. That’s 71 years.
WWII ended 75 years ago.
We’re getting old.
Most of my life I've had a distaste for wars and don't read books when they are just about that. There are other books and movies that wouldn't have meaning without the war parts.
Thanks, glad you found it interesting. I saw about the surrogate in my late mother's genealogy notes and tried to pick up where she left off. So I shared that one little bit of what I'd never known either.
Well, the revisionists may ultimately suffer a backlash, but I fear our younger ones are too pre-occupied with entertainment and brainwashed to a destructive cultural agenda. I never commented one way or another about the Confederate flag but it's pretty, and it's a part of our nation's heritage. I hate to have it destroyed over minorities. I empathize with the suffering of slavery. I have seen old photos of black families, and even though they were poor, there was a dignity about them. Now I've grown weary of all the hate and troublemaking, only some with a just cause at this late date.
The other night I happened to mention something about Bill Ayers and went through web pages and tried to explain all that to my 49-year-old daughter. She insisted on wiki, so wiki had a lot of it on there which I tied to other things that are out there and not on wiki. When she saw what Bill Ayers had been, the photo of him standing on the flag, and the fact that he is now a university teacher in Chicago as well as his ties to Obama, she said "I am shocked." It was all out there for anyone who was willing to dig it out.
“”I could not have been more wrong””
What a putz! When is he going to realize he’s wrong about most everything else also?
WOW, your daughter didn’t know. So many of us don’t realize what it’s like to be so mis-informed...or under informed.
I think if I tried to tell my daughter she’d just turn me off. Doesn’t care. My otherwise very intelligent youngest sister listens to NPR and watches the Today show. She is frequently shocked by what I tell her, she’ll ask for a link and I send it. I think in her crowd and younger age it’s more socially acceptable to be liberal....it means you “care”. They are unaware of danger.
Margaret Mitchell was born in 1900, her mother in 1872 and her father in 1866.
She was not that far removed from the Antebellum South. Her grandparents lived through the War, just as the grandparents of my grandparents did.
When I told my grandmother that my bride-to-be "was a Yankee", there was a long silence. Finally, she said, "Well, if you love her, I guess it's all right". My grandmother had grown up hearing stories of Sherman's army from her grandparents.
Margaret Mitchell was 4 years younger than my grandmother.
“There was once a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...”
Judah P. Benjamin was a member of Jefferson Davis’ cabinet. I don’t think there were any Jews in Lincoln’s cabinet.
First off, Margaret Mitchell was a conservative. Secondly, she did MASSIVE research for her book, starting in 1926. It took her ten years to research and write. In that age before the internet, this meant trips to libraries far flung, studying weather patterns and farming statistics — all to make her novel as realistic as possible. Her hands were blistered from carrying so many books for so long (maybe that’s where she got the idea about Scarlett’s workaday hands?).
It’s a terrific read. Selznick had a lot to work with. Everyone involved understood Mitchell’s achievement surpassed even the film. Clark Gable dedicated the premiere in Atlanta to Mitchell.
Liked the book, hated the movie. I don’t know if hate is the right word....let’s just say I’ve never been able to stay awake while watching the flick.
Very interesting post about your great grandfather’s father-in-law’s purchased surrogate ... I grew up not far from that cemetery and walked through it several times as a child.
ping
I did too, and at least ten more times after that.
“WWII ended 75 years ago.”
Yes, “we’re” getting more than old - WWII ended 70 years ago when I was 5 years old. I lived through it and still remember a lot, including my Marine father coming home, in 1945. Pearl Harbor was in 1941, so that was hardly after the war ended.
Made me smile. Might have to read GWTW again.
No one can really understand how things were in the past. Whatever the event, the polio vaccine, hippies, the year of 1968, Nixon . . . you can't explain the feel of the event to a young person.
I find it disconcerting that we must just let each generation learn from their own time.
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