Diary of Orrin Brown, Atlanta, Georgia
Sunday–Nov. 13th
It was verry cold last night but I sleped warm on our straw bed. There was another building burned in the City this morning. We had preaaching in camp today the text was There are many that say, who will show us any good Psalms 4 Chapt. and part of 6th verse. There was a large store building blowed up in the City this afternoon. The cars have stoped runing and the railroad is torne up for 30 or 40 miles above here. There has been a chilly West wind blowing all day. I have read 7 Chapters in the Testament today.
I felt bad about saying I didn’t care for Gone With the Wind when I was writing about Civil War movies. I’m not much of a fan for romance and drama, but I gave it a shot… And confirmed my prejudice. It is a grand epic—I can only speak to the film, not the book, although I assume the book would be more of the same but even grander.
Tara, the fictional plantation at the center of the story, is located 5 miles from Jonesboro, Georgia, about 20 miles south of Atlanta, where much of the drama takes place. Ashley Wilkes’ plantain, Twelve Oaks, is located nearby, also in Clayton County, Georgia. The first half of the movie interprets events up to this point in Orrin Brown’s story, while after intermission we follow Scarlett and company through Reconstruction. The movie, as most movies, plays fast and loose with the particulars of history, but that’s not really the point, is it? In 1979, several pieces remaining of the 1939 movie set were restored and put on display at the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum in Atlanta.
Read More:
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell by Margaret Mitchell (first edition published by The Macmillan Company, May 1936) The original price was $3, now commanding $2k-$10 for good condition with dust jacket. The Kindle print replica is $3.99.
- Gone With the Wind: 2-Disc 70th Anniversary Special Edition (Remastered, Full Frame, 1939) DVD on Amazon
- The Memoirs Of General William T. Sherman by W.T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990)
- The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta by Gary Ecelbarger (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010)
- Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Modern War Studies) by Albert Castel (University of Kansas Press, 1992)
- Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Great Campaigns of the Civil War) by Richard M. McMurry (University of Nebraska Press, 2000)
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