“Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell (post 10): Why is President Lincoln’s assassination, which would have affected the characters, not mentioned?

The two biggest historical news events during the time that this story takes place were the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln. So why is the assassination never mentioned? I have not yet finished rereading the novel (I first read it many years ago), but as Wikipedia says:

“Although Abraham Lincoln is mentioned in the novel fourteen times, no reference is made to his assassination on April 14, 1865” (1).

Wikipedia, which likes to give references for all its facts, gives no reference for the above statement, suggesting it is a fact known to alert readers, but that there may not be any published discussion about it.

Unable myself to find anything published about it, I have requested the help of a librarian to research whether Margaret Mitchell ever discussed the issue. Results are pending.

Meanwhile, I can readily think of a reason for the author to omit the assassination. She was sympathetic to the South, and might not have wanted to mention anything that could in any way have justified the harshness of the Reconstruction Era.

But would not the author, editor, and publisher have expected the omission of the assassination to cause an uproar? Would it not have made more sense to mention it, but put some mitigating spin on it?

Surprisingly, the omission did not, as far as I know, cause an uproar. Indeed, when I read this novel and saw the movie years ago, I never noticed the omission.

It is truly amazing what readers and reviewers fail to perceive in a novel—omitted assassinations, unlabelled multiple personality, whatever—if the narrator and characters do not call attention to it.

1. Wikipedia. “Gone With the Wind (novel).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_(novel)