Well, let me just say this.
I am a 54 year old housewife with nothing but Southern roots on each side of
my family, so I admit to a strong bias.
My paternal grandparents were born in North Carolina in the 1880's.
My maternal grandparents were born in Tidewater Virginia in the 1880's.
During my childhood and formative years in the 1950's, it was their
reflections on their parents' lives that shaped my thinking and taught me to
regard certain aspects of Southern American history the way I do.
I certainly will not bore you folks with that.
However, it was my beloved and dear and college degreed (i.e., not ignorant
red neck) grandparents who taught me that men like Sherman were gross and
vile.
On the other hand, one of my grandfathers (whose name was Wade Hampton
King) had a brother whose middle name was Grant......that brother was named
after Ulysses Grant. The family legend has it that my great-grandfather
named that son after the Union general out of gratitude for being able to
take his horse home from Appomatox.
In fairness, I think that it was the horrors of Reconstruction.... the
salted fields that the Yankee troops had left behind them along with
poisoned water wells, needlessly slaughtered live stock, the ring-barked
fruit and nut trees and the resulting starvation that caused the deepest and
most induring bitterness.
I do not think that Margaret Mitchell's book created myths. I think that
when many Southerners read GONE WITH THE WIND they were relieved that after
so many decades someone had finally come close to putting it right and
putting it down on paper.....and better yet, folks everywhere were reading
it and, perhaps, coming to a better understanding, albeit a romanticized
one, of what Southerners tended to be like.
I could go on and on and on, but I won't.
I could tell you about the teacher I had in college in the 1960's who asked
me (the only southerner in that small Vermont college), "Is it true that you
Southerners despise the blacks, the Jews and the Catholics. And if so, why?"
I was so flabberghasted that I could not answer except to say, "Why no. We
just hate Yankees!"
I could try to describe to you the anguish on my own mother's face as she
told me about her own grandmother's stories of eating insects and make 'tea'
out of shoe leather after the "Wah".
I can hear my mother now, telling me how her grandmother said over and over
and over,
"We were SO hungry."
Deane Ferguson Mills
a 13th generation Tidewater Virginian and proud of it.
> I agree with your assessment of Margaret Mitchell's role in tarnishing any
> understanding of Sherman. But no matter what is written, I'm afraid,
some
> Southerners, and nearly all Native Americans, will continue having a
> difficult time believing Sherman had any noble purpose in waging all out
> war, either against the Confederacy, or against the Sioux and other
Western
> peoples he subjugated in the Indian Wars.
>
> -Paul Shelton
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Watkinson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 3:21 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: sherman
>
>
> Harold is right. Total war is key. There was a review of a bio of
Sherman
> 2 or 3 weeks ago in the NYT Review of Books which strongly suggested that
> the man who said "war is hell" believed he could end the war sooner -- and
> stop the carnage -- by fighting the war in a differrent manner. This
seems
> to ring true. Margaret Mitchell (and David Selznick) probably did more to
> set back the cause of understanding the war than anyone who has ever
lived.
>
> Jim Watkinson
>
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