Gone With the Wind up to page 754

I feel like these past few chapters have bred a sort of awkwardness for Scarlett and Ashley, as they kind of express their love and care for another once again, but as usual are disrupted by Melanie's presence and the part she plays in their relationship. Scarlett will never truly be happy until she is with Ashley and Melanie is out of the picture.

After her father's funeral, Scarlett gives her dad's gold watch to Pork, her father's first slave, as a reward for his faithful service. Upon learning that Ashley intends to move to New York with Melanie, Scarlett appeals to him to take a half-interest in the mill and live in Atlanta. Ashley refuses, ashamed to live on her charity and tormented by his love for her. Scarlett begins to cry and Melanie rushes into the room. She learns of Scarlett’s offer and urges Ashley to accept it in order to repay Scarlett’s kindness and let Beau grow up in Atlanta rather than in the hostile North. Ashley accepts the offer at the expense of his honor. After Suellen and Will’s wedding, Carreen enters a convent, and Ashley, Melanie, and Beau move into a little house in Atlanta adjacent to Aunt Pittypat’s house. Melanie’s optimism, generosity, and adherence to old Southern values make her house the social nucleus for proud Southern families. Ashley proves incompetent at wringing profits from the labor of the freed slaves, so Scarlett announces her intention to lease convicts to work in her mills. Scarlett gives birth to an ugly baby girl and names her Ella Lorena. Scarlett is desperate to get back to the mill, but Frank forbids her to return. Atlanta has become dangerous, and Frank worries for Scarlett’s safety. The Yankees, he says, are trying to root out the Ku Klux Klan, and anger has begun to brew among the freed slaves in areas like Shantytown. A one-legged, one-eyed mountain man named Archie begins to work as Scarlett’s escort into town. Rude and intimidating, Archie quickly becomes an Atlanta institution, chaperoning women around town. When Archie hears about Scarlett’s plan to lease convicts to work in the mills, he threatens to stop assisting her. He tells her he was a convict for forty years after murdering his adulterous wife, and says that convict leasing is worse than slave ownership. Scarlett learns that the Georgia legislature has refused to ratify a Constitutional amendment granting blacks citizenship. Though many Southerners take pride in the legislature’s resolve, Scarlett realizes it will make the Yankees even harder on Atlanta. She leases ten convicts to work in her mills, hiring a Yankee Irishman named Johnnie Gallegher as their foreman. Atlanta is appalled at Scarlett’s actions, and Archie quits as promised, but Gallegher gets an astonishing amount of work out of his men. To Scarlett’s dismay, Gallegher fares far better than Ashley as a manager.

Unfortunately for Scarlett, she will have to make a decision between the two things she loves most in life; Ashley and money. This new convict worker is making her more money than the man she loves, and she is loosing money she desperately needs to save Tara to his foolishness. I hope she will finally get her morals straight and make a decision that will benefit her in both ways.