THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

"Monsters of Virtuous Pretension"

"Monsters of Virtuous Pretension"

By David Aiken on May 8, 2014

When I was a child growing up in Kirkwood Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, I was fascinated by three works of Atlanta public art:

The Cyclorama [and Civil War Museum at Grant Park] next to the Atlanta Zoo, is a 358 foot wide and 42 foot tall painting of the Battle of Atlanta, July 1864, the largest painting in the world – longer than a football field and taller than a four-story building. German artists painted it in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1886, but in my lifetime it was permanently located in Atlanta. I was told a diorama was added in 1936, giving it a three-dimensional foreground. I remember it being restored in 1979 – 1982. It is the single most impressive painting I have ever seen, and I have seen hundreds of great paintings.

I grew up near Stone Mountain, the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, much larger than Mount Rushmore, and the most popular tourist spot in Georgia. It is 90 by 190 feet, recessed 42 feet into the mountain. In 1916, it was conceived by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and officially completed in 1972. Since it is carved in granite, it will last longer than any other achievement by human beings. In other words, when all the buildings, bridges, dams and engineering feats of the human race fall into ruin and dust, the granite carvings of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson will endure. It is fitting, I think, that the greatest ideas and the noblest heroism should be remembered in the most enduring monuments.

I learned early in my childhood that Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson fought to preserve the values of men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson – who created a culture of the soil based on inalienable rights and true learning. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson led in the fight for the American Republic of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson: for self-government and fair taxation among free and independent states. They fought with bullets.

I understood that I would have to fight not with bullets, but with books in the classroom and in the minds of people. Lacking a sound knowledge of the South, of our history and literature, we are inadequately armed when conflict arises. I learned that knowledge of key Southern authors and books is as good as musket and shot. One of the first great insights of my life is that people are enslaved with the sword and with government and private debt, but with true knowledge people are liberated.

I grew up with Gone with the Wind — the 1936 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by the Atlanta native Margaret Mitchell. I always knew that Gone with the Wind is about the Yankee invasion of Georgia and the burning and destruction of Atlanta. Gone with the Wind would become the most popular American novel of the 20th century, surpassing standard academic novels like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby, and all the other novels which are currently required reading in almost every classroom in the country. Gone with the Wind inspired the 1939 David O. Selznick film, which has been viewed by more people than any of the other 300,000 Hollywood films. Today it is recognized as the biggest box office hit of all time, and the pinnacle of the Hollywood system.

I should add that it also has the most quotable line in all those movies.

By the time I graduated from Murphy High School, I had read all 1,037 pages of Gone With the Wind, seen the movie six times, been to the Cyclorama at least 20 times, and had climbed, visited or driven by Stone Mountain hundreds of times — back in the days before the Mountain became a Georgia state park. As a youth, I lived my life around these tributes to the Southern Confederacy, without embarrassment or shame. They were at the heart of my Atlanta. I can remember buying Confederate Battle Flags at Stone Mountain, and attending the Cyclorama with my school mates.

I also knew that Gone With the Wind and the extraordinary film it inspired were favorites of my mother.

I vividly remember a particular scene in the middle of Gone With the Wind. As a child, I would catch the # 18 bus from my house in Kirkwood to the downtown Loews Grand or Paramount theaters at Five Points. I would sit there enthralled, watching and learning. At one point in the long four-hour movie, many of the people in those theaters jumped up out of their seats and cheered.