Description:

MARGARET MITCHELL
(1900 - 1949) American novelist, author of the immensely popular tale of the South during the Civil War, ‘Gone With the Wind'. 'PRESIDENT LINCOLN BORE THE BLAME FOR MANY THINGS IN THE MINDS OF SOUTHERN PEOPLE…' Superb content T.L.S. ‘Margaret Mitchell Marsh', 2pp. 4to., Atlanta, Dec. 10, 1937, to Marion County Circuit Judge Leonard H. McMahan. In part: ‘…In reply to your remarks about the blame for the failure to exchange prisoners being laid on President Lincoln, that calls for an explanation of my method in handling the ‘contemporaneous' angle of ‘Gone With the Wind.' I attempted to write it not from the viewpoint of a person of this time looking backward into history but from the viewpoint of a person living in the [eighteen] sixties. To this end I put into the minds and the mouths of characters beliefs, rumors and prejudices (some of which have been proven right and some wrong in the light of history). I gathered from reading letters of that day, newspapers, memoirs et cetera, that President Lincoln bore the blame for many things in the minds of Southern people. Prejudice as well as death loves a shining mark and, rightly or wrongly, Southerners, for the most part, believed Lincoln responsible for the failure to exchange prisoners. Your statement that your father spoke of General Grant as ‘a butcher' interested me. I used that word in connection with him because I came across it frequently in Northern newspapers of the day. There was a time when Grant was very unpopular in the North because he seemed to be carelessly hurling thousands of Federal soldiers to their deaths and many of the newspapers criticized him venomously and called him a butcher. I have some letters from Northern people who apparently did not know of this and they felt that my use of the word ‘butcher' showed a Southern prejudice and hate. This, of course, was far from being the truth. I, like most other Southerners, can never forget that, while Grant was a ruthless foe in battle, he was a generous and courteous man when the Surrender occurred. His thoughtfulness in permitting the Confederates to keep their side arms and the horses which they personally owned will never be forgotten. Had it not been for those horses, which stepped from the battlefield into the furrow, the South would probably have seen much more destitution in 1865 and 1866 that it did see…'. Mitchell's response to McMahan's questioning regarding both Lincoln and Grant reflects much of GWTW's foundational premise: that the Civil War was, at heart, not about slavery but about Northern depredations of and violence toward Southern ways and culture. Leonard H. McMahan (1866-1957) of Salem, OR, founded the Woodburn Independent newspaper in 1888 and was a Marion County Circuit Judge from 1924 to 1943. His obituary in the ‘Oregon Statesman' reads: ‘In the course of his long career, Judge McMahan probably lost more public battles than he won, but he was always a man to be reckoned with, who fought valiantly for causes he deemed right and who saw many reforms come for which he had labored. His rapier is sheathed, but his memory will live long for he was the type about whom legends grow…'. Mitchell corresponded with McMahan many times but research has not yet revealed how the two were otherwise connected. Central fold, otherwise fine.

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January 19, 2024 10:00 AM EST
Elkton, MD, US

Alexander Historical Auctions LLC

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