It was not that they regretted their men were still alive. It was

that they bitterly resented owing the men's lives to such a man as

Rhett and to such an embarrassing trick. For months they had

writhed under Yankee laughter and scorn, and the ladies felt and

said that if Rhett really had the good of the Klan at heart he

would have managed the affair in a more seemly fashion. They said

he had deliberately dragged in Belle Watling to put the nice people

of the town in a disgraceful position. And so he deserved neither

thanks for rescuing the men nor forgiveness for his past sins.

These women, so swift to kindness, so tender to the sorrowing, so

untiring in times of stress, could be as implacable as furies to

any renegade who broke one small law of their unwritten code. This

code was simple. Reverence for the Confederacy, honor to the

veterans, loyalty to old forms, pride in poverty, open hands to

friends and undying hatred to Yankees. Between them, Scarlett and

Rhett had outraged every tenet of this code.

The men whose lives Rhett had saved attempted, out of decency and a

sense of gratitude, to keep their women silent but they had little

success. Before the announcement of their coming marriage, the two

had been unpopular enough but people could still be polite to them

in a formal way. Now even that cold courtesy was no longer

possible. The news of their engagement came like an explosion,

unexpected and shattering, rocking the town, and even the mildest-

mannered women spoke their minds heatedly. Marrying barely a year

after Frank's death and she had killed him! And marrying that

Butler man who owned a brothel and who was in with the Yankees and

Carpetbaggers in all kinds of thieving schemes! Separately the two

of them could be endured, but the brazen combination of Scarlett

and Rhett was too much to be borne. Common and vile, both of them!

They ought to be run out of town!

Atlanta might perhaps have been more tolerant toward the two if the

news of their engagement had not come at a time when Rhett's

Carpetbagger and Scallawag cronies were more odious in the sight of

respectable citizens than they had ever been before. Public

feeling against the Yankees and all their allies was at fever heat

at the very time when the town learned of the engagement, for the

last citadel of Georgia's resistance to Yankee rule had just

fallen. The long campaign which had begun when Sherman moved

southward from above Dalton, four years before, had finally reached

Its climax, and the state's humiliation was complete.

Three years of Reconstruction had passed and they had been three

years of terrorism. Everyone had thought that conditions were

already as bad as they could ever be. But now Georgia was

discovering that Reconstruction at its worst had just begun.

For three years the Federal government had been trying to impose

alien ideas and an alien rule upon Georgia and, with an army to

enforce its commands, it had largely succeeded. But only the power

of the military upheld the new regime. The state was under the

Yankee rule but not by the state's consent. Georgia's leaders had

kept on battling for the state's right to govern itself according

to its own ideas. They had continued resisting all efforts to

force them to bow down and accept the dictates of Washington as

their own state law.

Officially, Georgia's government had never capitulated but it had

been a futile fight, an ever-losing fight. It was a fight that

could not win but it had, at least, postponed the inevitable.

Already many other Southern states had illiterate negroes in high

public office and legislatures dominated by negroes and

Carpetbaggers. But Georgia, by its stubborn resistance, had so far

escaped this final degradation. For the greater part of three

years, the state's capitol had remained in the control of white men

and Democrats. With Yankee soldiers everywhere, the state

officials could do little but protest and resist. Their power was

nominal but they had at least been able to keep the state

government in the hands of native Georgians. Now even that last

stronghold had fallen.

Just as Johnston and his men had been driven back step by step from

Dalton to Atlanta, four years before, so had the Georgia Democrats

been driven back little by little, from 1865 on. The power of the

Federal government over the state's affairs and the lives of its

citizens had been steadily made greater and greater. Force had

been piled on top of force and military edicts in increasing

numbers had rendered the civil authority more and more impotent.

Finally, with Georgia in the status of a military province, the

polls had been ordered thrown open to the negroes, whether the

state's laws permitted it or not.

A week before Scarlett and Rhett announced their engagement, an

election for governor had been held. The Southern Democrats had

General John B. Gordon, one of Georgia's best loved and most

honored citizens, as their candidate. Opposing him was a

Republican named Bullock. The election had lasted three days

instead of one. Trainloads of negroes had been rushed from town to

town, voting at every precinct along the way. Of course, Bullock

had won.

If the capture of Georgia by Sherman had caused bitterness, the

final capture of the state's capitol by the Carpetbaggers, Yankees

and negroes caused an intensity of bitterness such as the state had

never known before. Atlanta and Georgia seethed and raged.

And Rhett Butler was a friend of the hated Bullock!

Scarlett, with her usual disregard of all matters not directly

under her nose, had scarcely known an election was being held.

Rhett had taken no part in the election and his relations with the

Yankees were no different from what they had always been. But the

fact remained that Rhett was a Scallawag and a friend of Bullock.

And, if the marriage went through, Scarlett also would be turning

Scallawag. Atlanta was in no mood to be tolerant or charitable

toward anyone in the enemy camp and, the news of the engagement

coming when it did, the town remembered all of the evil things

about the pair and none of the good.

Scarlett knew the town was rocking but she did not realize the

extent of public feeling until Mrs. Merriwether, urged on by her

church circle, took it upon herself to speak to her for her own

good.

"Because your own dear mother is dead and Miss Pitty, not being a

matron, is not qualified to--er, well, to talk to you upon such a

subject, I feel that I must warn you, Scarlett, Captain Butler is

not the kind of a man for any woman of good family to marry. He is

a--"

"He managed to save Grandpa Merriwether's neck and your nephew's,

too."

Mrs. Merriwether swelled. Hardly an hour before she had had an