Scarlett heard over and over until she could have screamed at the repetition: "I'd have taken their damned oath right after the surrender if they'd acted decent I can be restored to the Union, but by God, I can't be reconstructed into it!"
Through these anxious days and nights, Scarlett was torn with fear. The ever-present
menace of lawless negroes and Yankee soldiers preyed on her mind, the danger of confiscation was constantly with her, even in her dreams, and she dreaded worse terrors to come. Depressed by the helplessness of herself and her friends, of the whole South, it was not strange that she often remembered during these days the words which Tony Fontaine had spoken so passionately:
"God God, Scarlett, it isn't to be borne! And it won't be borne!"
In spite of war, fire and Reconstruction, Atlanta had again become a boom town. In many
ways, the place resembled the busy young city of the Confederacy's early days. The only trouble was that the soldiers crowding the streets wore the wrong kind of uniforms, the money was in the hands of the wrong people, and the negroes were living in leisure while their former masters struggled and starved.
Underneath the surface were misery and fear, but all the outward appearances were those
of a thriving town that was rapidly rebuilding from its ruins, a bustling, hurrying town. Atlanta, it seemed, must always be hurrying, no matter what its circumstances might be. Savannah,
Charleston, Augusta, Richmond, New Orleans would never hurry. It was ill bred and Yankeefied
to hurry. But in this period, Atlanta was more ill bred and Yankeefied than it had ever been before or would ever be again. With "new people" thronging in from all directions, the streets were choked and noisy from morning till night. The shiny carriages of Yankee officers' wives and newly rich Carpetbaggers splashed mud on the dilapidated buggies of the townspeople, and
gaudy new homes of wealthy strangers crowded in among the sedate dwellings of older citizens.
The war had definitely established the importance of Atlanta in the affairs of the South
and the hitherto obscure town was now known far and wide. The railroads for which Sherman had fought an entire summer and killed thousands of men were again stimulating the life of the city they had brought into being. Atlanta was again the center of activities for a wide region, as it had been before its destruction, and the town was receiving a great influx of new citizens, both welcome and unwelcome.
Invading Carpetbaggers made Atlanta their headquarters and on the streets they jostled
against representatives of the oldest families in the South who were likewise newcomers in the town. Families from the country districts who had been burned out during Sherman's march and who could no longer make a living without the slaves to till the cotton had come to Atlanta to live. New settlers were coming in every day from Tennessee and the Carolinas where the hand of Reconstruction lay even heavier than in Georgia. Many Irish and Germans who had been bounty men in the Union Army had settled in Atlanta after their discharge. The wives and families of the Yankee garrison, filled with curiosity about the South after four years of war, came to swell the population. Adventurers of every kind swarmed in, hoping to make their fortunes, and the
negroes from the country continued to come by the hundreds.
The town was roaring--wide open like a frontier village, making no effort to cover its
vices and sins. Saloons blossomed overnight, two and sometimes three in a block, and after nightfall the streets were full of drunken men, black and white, reeling from wall to curb and back again. Thugs, pickpockets and prostitutes lurked in the unlit alleys and shadowy streets.
Gambling houses ran full blast and hardly a night passed without its shooting or cutting affray.
Respectable citizens were scandalized to find that Atlanta had a large and thriving red-light district, larger and more thriving than during the war. All night long pianos jangled from behind drawn shades and rowdy songs and laughter floated out, punctuated by occasional screams and pistol shots. The inmates of these houses were bolder than the prostitutes of the war days and brazenly hung out of their windows and called to passers-by. And on Sunday afternoons, the handsome closed carriages of the madams of the district rolled down the main streets, filled with girls in their best finery, taking the air from behind lowered silk shades.
Belle Watling was the most notorious of the madams. She had opened a new house of her
own, a large two-story building that made neighboring houses in the district look like shabby rabbit warrens. There was a long barroom downstairs, elegantly hung with oil paintings, and a negro orchestra played every night. The upstairs, so rumor said, was fitted out with the finest of plush upholstered furniture, heavy lace curtains and imported mirrors in gilt frames. The dozen young ladies with whom the house was furnished were comely, if brightly painted, and