Not the

434 Margaret Mitchell (cid:151) GONE WITH THE WIND smart folks nor the quality folks nor the rich folks.

Huh! I could vote if I took their damned oath. I didnt have any money in sixty-five and I certainly warnt a colonel or nothin remarkable. But I aint goin to take their oath. Not by a dinged sight! If the Yankees had acted right, Id have taken their oath of allegiance but I aint now. I can be restored to the Union but I cant be reconstructed into it. I aint goin to take their oath even if I dont never vote again But scum like that Hilton feller, he can vote, and scoundrels like Jonas Wilkerson and pore whites like the Slatterys and no-counts like the Macintoshes, they can vote. And theyre runnin things now. And if they want to come down on you for extra taxes a dozen times, they can do it. Just like a nigger can kill a white man and not get hung or He paused, embarrassed, and the memory of what had happened to a lone white woman on an isolated farm near Lovejoy was in both their minds. ... Those niggers can do anything against us and the Freedmens Bureau and the soldiers will back the

Vote! she cried. Vote! What on earth has voting got to do with all this, Will? Its taxes were talking about. ... Will, everybody knows what a good plantation Tara is. We could mortgage it for enough to pay the taxes, if we had to. Miss Scarlett, you aint any fool but sometimes you talk like one. Whos got any money to lend you on this property? Who except the Carpetbaggers who are tryin to take Tara away from you? Why, everybodys got land. Everybodys land pore. You cant give away land. Ive got those diamond earbobs I got off that Yankee. We could sell them. Miss Scarlett, who round here has got money for ear-bobs? Folks aint got money to buy side meat, let alone gewgaws. If youve got ten dollars in gold, I take oath thats more than most folks have got. They were silent again and Scarlett felt as if she were butting her head against a stone wall. There had been so many stone walls to butt against this last year.