The Reconstruction

During the Reconstruction, which is explained in chapters 31-34 of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, life in the south is hard. Mitchell doesn't go into great detail about the loss of the war and the exact feelings of the characters about it, but in the South in her book, there is barely concealed rage, humiliation, and tension. There's also a lot of confusion, as well. As Mitchell explains, "the scourge of the war had been followed by the worse scourge of the Reconstruction." It's so bad because during the war, there was always the light at the end of the tunnel: "We're going to win this war, and then it'll all be okay again. It'll all go back to normal after we win the war." Now, there's nothing about the realization that this is the new normal, this is how their life is going to be. Ex-Confederates were forced to take an oath of allegiance to the United States before they could vote (Eyewitness Books, "The Civil War," page 62), which was absolutely horrifying to them. Not only that, but Federal troops occupied the beautiful red hills and swamps of the South for 10 years after that, making this the most painful part of the war for the Confederates.