They invaded the house at all hours and without warning.
They swarmed through the rooms, asking questions, opening closets, prodding clothes hampers, peering under beds.
The military authorities had heard that Tony had been advised to go to Miss Pitty's house, and they were certain he was still hiding there or somewhere m the neighborhood.
As a result, Aunt Pitty was chronically in what Uncle Peter called a "state," never knowing when her bedroom would be entered by an officer and a squad of men.
Neither Frank nor Scarlett had mentioned Tony's brief visit, so the old lady could have revealed nothing, even had she been so inclined.
She was entirely honest in her fluttery protestations that she had seen Tony Fontaine only once in her life and that was at Christmas time in 1862.
"And," she would add breathlessly to the Yankee soldiers, in an effort to be helpful, "he was quite intoxicated at the time."
Scarlett, sick and miserable in the early stage of pregnancy, alternated between a passionate hatred of the bluecoats who invaded her privacy, frequently carrying away any little knick-knack that appealed to them, and an equally passionate fear that Tony might prove the undoing of them all.
The prisons were full of people who had been arrested for much less reason.
She knew that if one iota of the truth were proved against them, not only she and Frank but the innocent Pitty as well would go to jail.
For some time there had been an agitation in Washington to confiscate all "Rebel property" to pay the United States' war debt and this agitation had kept Scarlett in a state of anguished apprehension.
Now, in addition to this, Atlanta was full of wild rumors about the confiscation of property of offenders against military law, and Scarlett quaked lest she and Frank lose not only their freedom but the house, the store and the mill.
And even if their property were not appropriated by the military, it would be as good as lost if she and Frank went to jail, for who would look after their business in their absence?
She hated Tony for bringing such trouble upon them.
How could he have done such a thing to friends?
And how could Ashley have sent Tony to them?
Never again would she give aid to anyone if it meant having the Yankees come down on her like a swarm of hornets.
No, she would bar the door against anyone needing help. Except, of course, Ashley.
For weeks after Tony's brief visit she woke from uneasy dreams at any sound in the road outside, fearing it might be Ashley trying to make his escape, fleeing to Texas because of the aid he had given Tony.
She did not know how matters stood with him, for they did not dare write to Tara about Tony's midnight visit.
Their letters might be intercepted by the Yankees and bring trouble upon the plantation as well.
But, when weeks went by and they heard no bad news, they knew that Ashley had somehow come clear.
And finally, the Yankees ceased annoying them.
But even this relief did not free Scarlett from the state of dread which began when Tony came knocking at their door, a dread which was worse than the quaking fear of the siege shells, worse even than the terror of Sherman's men during the last days of the war.
It was as if Tony's appearance that wild rainy night had stripped merciful blinders from her eyes and forced her to see the true uncertainty of her life.
Looking about her in that cold spring of 1866, Scarlett realized what was facing her and the whole South.
She might plan and scheme, she might work harder than her slaves had ever worked, she might succeed in overcoming all of her hardships, she might through dint of determination solve problems for which her earlier life had provided no training at all. But for all her labor and sacrifice and resourcefulness, her small beginnings purchased at so great a cost might be snatched away from her at any minute.
And should this happen, she had no legal rights, no legal redress, except those same drumhead courts of which Tony had spoken so bitterly, those military courts with their arbitrary powers.
Only the negroes had rights or redress these days. The Yankees had the South prostrate and they intended to keep it so.
The South had been tilted as by a giant malicious hand, and those who had once ruled were now more helpless than their former slaves had ever been.
Georgia was heavily garrisoned with troops and Atlanta had more than its share.
The commandants of the Yankee troops in the various cities had complete power, even the power of life and death, over the civilian population, and they used that power.
They could and did imprison citizens for any cause, or no cause, seize their property, hang them.
They could and did harass and hamstring them with conflicting regulations about the operation of their business, the wages they must pay their servants, what they should say in public and private utterances and what they should write in newspapers.
They regulated how, when and where they must dump their garbage and they decided what songs the daughters and wives of ex-Confederates could sing, so that the singing of
"Dixie" or
"Bonnie Blue Flag" became an offense only a little less serious than treason.
They ruled that no one could get a letter our of the post office without taking the Iron Clad oath and, in some instances, they even prohibited the issuance of marriage licenses unless the couples had taken the hated oath.
The newspapers were so muzzled that no public protest could be raised against the injustices or depredations of the military, and individual protests were silenced with jail sentences.
The jails were full of prominent citizens and there they stayed without hope of early trial.
Trial by jury and the law of habeas corpus were practically suspended.
The civil courts still functioned after a fashion but they functioned at the pleasure of the military, who could and did interfere with their verdicts, so that citizens so unfortunate as to get arrested were virtually at the mercy of the military authorities.
And so many did get arrested.
The very suspicion of seditious utterances against the government, suspected complicity in the Ku Klux Klan, or complaint by a negro that a white man had been uppity to him were enough to land a citizen in jail.
Proof and evidence were not needed.
The accusation was sufficient.
And thanks to the incitement of the Freedmen's Bureau, negroes could always be found who were willing to bring accusations.
The negroes had not yet been given the right to vote but the North was determined that they should vote and equally determined that their vote should be friendly to the North.
With this in mind, nothing was too good for the negroes.
The Yankee soldiers backed them up in anything they chose to do, and the surest way for a white person to get himself into trouble was to bring a complaint of any kind against a negro. The former slaves were now the lords of creation and, with the aid of the Yankees, the lowest and most ignorant ones were on top.