Lessons in War and Manufacturing Supremacy from Gone with the Wind

Rhett Butler's "The Arsenal of the North" speech

I first read Gone with the Wind when I was 15 years old, and it was the first book I remember reading that felt significant.

It was published in 1936, and follows Scarlett O’Hara from the eve of the Civil War to her life years after it concluded. She grew up in Clayton County, Georgia and later moved to Atlanta, so hers is not an especially happy story—but it is a great one.

I’m currently re-reading Gone with the Wind, so I thought I’d share a short speech that one of its principal characters makes early on, after the South has fired on Fort Sumter, but before the formal beginning of the war.

The slave-owning plantation gentry are all gathered for a summer barbecue when the men begin excitedly discussing the prospect of war with the North. They’re all fully convinced that the South would prevail instantly, when the socially ill-received Rhett Butler gives them an unwelcome economic analysis.

Who, in the modern era, reminds you of the Southerners? Who reminds you of the North?¹

From Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler’s “The Arsenal of the North” speech:

“Why, we could lick them in a month! Gentlemen always fight better than rabble. A month—why, one battle—”

“Gentlemen,” said Rhett Butler, in a flat drawl that bespoke his Charleston birth, not moving from his position against the tree or taking his hands from his pockets, “may I say a word?”

There was contempt in his manner as in his eyes, contempt overlaid with an air of courtesy that somehow burlesqued their own manners. The group turned toward him and accorded him the politeness always due an outsider.

“Has any one of you gentlemen ever thought that there's not a cannon factory south of the Mason-Dixon Line? Or how few iron foundries there are in the South? Or woolen mills or cotton factories or tanneries? Have you thought that we would not have a single warship and that the Yankee fleet could bottle up our harbors in a week, so that we could not sell our cotton abroad? But—of course—you gentlemen have thought of these things.”

“Why, he means the boys are a passel of fools!” thought Scarlett indignantly, the hot blood coming to her cheeks.

Evidently, she was not the only one to whom this idea occurred, for several of the boys were beginning to stick out their chins. John Wilkes casually but swiftly came back to his place beside the speaker, as if to impress on all present that this man was his guest and that, moreover, there were ladies present.

“The trouble with most of us Southerners,” continued Rhett Butler, “is that we either don't travel enough or we don't profit enough by our travels. Now, of course, all you gentlemen are well traveled. But what have you seen? Europe and New York and Philadelphia and, of course, the ladies have been to Saratoga” (he bowed slightly to the group under the arbor).

“You've seen the hotels and the museums and the balls and the gambling houses. And you've come home believing that there's no place like the South. As for me, I was Charleston born, but I have spent the last few years in the North.” His white teeth showed in a grin, as though he realized that everyone present knew just why he no longer lived in Charleston, and cared not at all if they did know. “I have seen many things that you all have not seen. The thousands of immigrants who'd be glad to fight for the Yankees for food and a few dollars, the factories, the foundries, the shipyards, the iron and coal mines—all the things we haven't got. Why, all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance. They'd lick us in a month.”

For a tense moment, there was silence. Rhett Butler removed a fine linen handkerchief from his coat pocket and idly flicked dust from his sleeve. Then an ominous murmuring arose in the crowd and from under the arbor came a humming as unmistakable as that of a hive of newly disturbed bees.

via Midjourney

1. Freedom’s forge has resided in America for the longest time, and thankfully with the North during the middle of the nineteenth century. Where is it now?