Gone With The Wind Reconsidered

Gone With The Wind 
Movie Poster

When Mr. Smith said we were going to watch Gone with the Wind, I honestly rolled my eyes. A four hour movie from 100 years ago? I thought it was going to be black and white (it’s not), slow, and way too romantic for my attention span. But it's easy to admit that once I started watching, I got pulled in. It’s way more complicated than I thought, and it left me with mixed feelings.

The first thing that hit me was how huge everything felt the costumes, the sets, the drama. It’s like every scene is trying to be the most dramatic moment ever. At first, it almost felt over the top, but then I realized that’s what makes it so intense. It’s not just a love story, but it’s about a world falling apart and people trying to hang on to whatever’s left of it.

Scarlett's Green Curtain Dress

Scarlett had surprised me the most. She’s honestly hard to like in my opinion, she is selfish, rude, and always thinking about herself but she’s also kind of fascinating. I started out judging her, but by the end, I sort of respected her. She refuses to give up no matter how bad things get. She’s not the type of hero you usually see in old movies. She’s messy and unapologetic, but she’s also real. I think that’s why people still talk about her. 

What threw me off, though, was how the movie treats the South. It’s like it wants to make you miss that world, even though it was built on slavery. That part made me uncomfortable. You see all this sadness about the South being destroyed, but not much about what that way of life actually meant for the people enslaved there. Watching that in 2025 feels strange it’s beautiful to look at, but the story it tells leaves out a lot of ugly truth.

The one character who really stands out to me was Mammy. She’s the one person who actually seems to understand what’s going on. She’s funny, smart, and constantly calling everyone out. Even though the movie doesn’t give her the attention she deserves, every scene of her makes the audience feel strong and real. She honestly has a huge impact of holding the whole house together, and I wish the story showed more of her side.

The Burning of Atlanta 

By the end, I didn’t totally love Gone with the Wind, but I didn’t hate it either, which is good for me considering I become critical towards older films. It’s confusing, beautiful, and frustrating all at once. I get why it’s considered a classic the acting, the emotion, and the way it captures a time that no longer exists. But it’s also a reminder that old movies can carry ideas that don’t sit right today.

So yeah, it wasn’t what I expected. I went in thinking it’d be a boring old movie, and I came out actually thinking about history, survival, and how people can be strong in totally different ways.

Henry Wilson: From Indentured Servant to Vice President

Henry Wilson portrait

     Few American political figures embody the ideals of self-determination and moral conviction quite like Henry Wilson. Born Jeremiah Jones Colbath on February 16, 1812, in Farmington, New Hampshire, Wilson's journey from indentured servitude to the second-highest office in the nation stands as a testament to perseverance and principle. His lifelong crusade against slavery would define not only his career but also shape the course of American history during its most turbulent era.

Wilson's early life was marked by hardship. At just ten years old, his impoverished father bound him out as an apprentice to a local farmer, where he would labor until age twenty-one with minimal formal education. Yet this experience of servitude, however mild compared to chattel slavery, instilled in him a profound understanding of bondage that would fuel his abolitionist fire. Upon gaining his freedom, he legally changed his name to Henry Wilson and walked over one hundred miles to Natick, Massachusetts, where he learned the shoemaking trade. Through determination and business acumen, the young cobbler eventually built a thriving shoe factory, earning wealth and the enduring nickname "The Natick Cobbler."

Wilson's political awakening came during a trip to Washington, D.C., where he witnessed slavery firsthand—the auctions, the chains, the systematic dehumanization. After seeing slaves at work and visiting the slave pens in Maryland, he became a committed abolitionist. This would become the central mission of his life. He entered politics through the Massachusetts legislature in 1840, initially as a Whig, but his frustration with the party's compromises on slavery led him to help establish the Free Soil Party in 1848. He worked diligently to build an anti-slavery coalition that united various factions—Free Soilers, anti-slavery Democrats, Liberty Party members, and eventually the newly formed Republican Party.

Sir Henry Wilson, First Baronet

Elected to the United States Senate in 1855, Wilson served with distinction until 1873, becoming Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs during the Civil War. His legislative achievements were substantial and consequential. In April 1862, he authored the District of Columbia Emancipation Act, which President Lincoln signed into law, freeing approximately three thousand enslaved people in the nation's capital. He championed equal pay for African American soldiers, successfully adding provisions to the 1864 Enrollment Act that guaranteed formerly enslaved people who enlisted would be considered permanently free by federal action, preventing any possibility of re-enslavement. This single measure freed over twenty thousand individuals in Kentucky alone.

After the war, Wilson aligned with the Radical Republicans, pushing for comprehensive civil rights protections and opposing President Andrew Johnson's lenient approach to Reconstruction. In 1872, Wilson was chosen as Ulysses S. Grant's running mate, marketed as the "Natick Shoemaker" to complement Grant's "Galena Tanner"—a ticket designed to appeal to working-class Americans. Though he won the vice presidency, Wilson's tenure was tragically brief.

Article regarding the Death
of Henry Wilson

Suffering from poor health and grief following the deaths of his wife and son, Wilson spent much of his vice presidency writing his three-volume work, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America. On November 22, 1875, he died of a stroke at age sixty-three while working in the Capitol.

Henry Wilson's legacy endures as a champion of human dignity who understood that true freedom requires not just emancipation, but equality, opportunity, and unwavering moral courage.

All disclaimer: I used Claude AI to help me format, research and give me ideas to write about Henry Wilson. I constructed the research and blog post format that Claude provided into a blog post