Are you familiar with the term pedigree collapse?
There are pretty good explanations for the concept here, and here (by the amazing Mr. Tim Urban), and essentially it's a term for a genealogy paradox. I'm sure you've heard it said that everybody in the world shares a common ancestor (i.e. that we're all 19th or 20th cousins or something like that), and the reason why it shakes out this way is because of math. Basically, every single person alive (1) has two parents (2), four grandparents (4), and eight great-grandparents (8) and the number of ancestors naturally doubles as you go back through history. Except if we follow this multiplication table to a logical conclusion, this means that there were something like a trillion people alive at the time of, say, the Roman Empire. Except we all know this isn't true, since the total world population at the time of Julius and Cleopatra was something like 300,000,000. Those numbers don't add up, so what gives?
The answer is that each person from that era who produced children essentially plays more than one role in your family tree. Cousins married cousins, brothers married sisters, nieces married uncles, and so on, which mean that the same man living in 1600 AD might be your great^8 grandfather, your great^10 uncle, and your 12th cousin 23 times removed or whatever. Thanks history gal, I can hear you say, but what in the hell does this stupid genealogy theory have to do with Chapter 37 of GWTW?
Well, it has everything to do with it, as a matter of fact.
GWTW was on TCM last night, and I caught a few minutes of the burning of Atlanta before I went to bed. Now, GWTW the book and GWTW the movie both have a cast of thousands, right? GWTW is all party scenes and soldiers marching off to battle and gossip about people with funny names, but in truth MM's book only contains a few essential characters and each of them plays several roles over the course of the novel. Let's take Tony Fontaine for an example:
Role 1: In the beginning of the book he is a foil for the Tarleton twins (he got into a brawl with one of the twins and shot Brent).
Role 2: In chapter 15 he returns to Atlanta on Christmas Eve with Ashley, "splendidly drunk, boisterous and quarrelsome."
Role 3: Scarlett lies destroys Frank and Suellen's relationship by lying to Frank and telling him that Suellen is going to marry Tony Fontaine in a few weeks.
Role 4: Tony shows up in the middle of the night, waking Scarlett and Frank to tell them all hell has broken lose and that he's killed Jonas Wilkerson and Eustis (a former slave), and is lighting out for Texas in order to escape being hanged.
So that's four separate roles for the same minor character. In lesser hands these would be four different men with four different names, four different backgrounds and four different physical appearances, but MM streamlined GWTW so much that she feels comfortable and confident using the same character over and over again. Everybody in GWTW has multiple functions and a reason for being in the story that goes far beyond what you expect the first or second time you meet them in the pages of the novel, and that gives us the impression that everyone has a story arc and that they grow and change just like the people in our own lives. A wise man once said that "all the world's a stage...and one man in his time plays many parts," and I think that GWTW demonstrates this truism more than most novels of this size and scope.
And now that I've got that off my chest, I suppose it's time to address MM and Frank Kennedy and the KKK. Except you know what? So much has been written about GWTW and racism and MM and the KKK and the depictions of African-Americans in the novel and in the movie, I don't know if I'd be comfortable unpacking my feelings on the topic in this setting. But for all that GWTW is a novel of its time and place, and therefore limited in how truly progressive it can possibly be in its finished form, I will say that there are still little nuggets of surprise politics hidden throughout the novel. For instance, let's spend a little time thinking about rape and sex as a threat to southern womanhood.
MM doesn't talk much about sex as an act, of course. There's nothing even remotely explicit in the pages of GWTW, and yet sex and lust are implicit in many conversations, particularly those Scarlett has with Ashley and Rhett. But rape is a different story entirely. Lots of people talk about rape. During the war the women are afraid the Yankees are going to sweep through Georgia and go on a rape spree that will make the Japanese behavior in Nanking look like a teaparty. And then rape comes up again in this part of the novel, since MM wants us to believe the men join the KKK primarily to protect southern women from Yankee soldiers and drunken black men. And then finally, of course, we have the scene where Scarlett is ambushed and almost raped (I guess?) by a few baddies near the outskirts of Atlanta. However, for all of this talk, Scarlett is never raped or witnesses a rape or knows anybody who was actually raped by anybody, black or white, Yankee or Confederate. It's all put down to conjecture and rumor and gossip, and Scarlett doesn't take anything she's heard very seriously during this part of the novel.
Which makes it incredibly ironic that the only confirmed sexual assault in GWTW happens in Scarlett's own mansion and is perpetuated by none other than Rhett K. Butler himself. So now, for all of the chatter about freed slaves and Yankees and lower class men overstepping boundaries during this section of the novel, the only man who actually has the opportunity and interest and strength to force himself on a woman and have carnal knowledge without her consent is the wealthiest, most-refined, and most-trustworthy man in the entire story. I'll come back to this idea when I get to that all-important part of the novel in a few weeks, but I think this eventual outcome refutes the notion that MM's approach to racial politics is as simple and reactionary as some people believe.
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