trash_," or "crackers." They were most heartily and righteously
detested by the slave population. As the poor whites of the South were
fifty years ago, so they are to-day--a careless, ignorant, lazy, but
withal, arrogant set, who add nothing to the productive wealth of the
community because they are too lazy to work, and who take nothing from
that wealth because they are too poor to purchase. They have graded
human wants to a point below which man could not go without starving.
They live upon the poorest land in the South, the "piney woods," and
raise a few potatoes and corn, and a few pigs, which never grow to be
hogs, so sterile is the land upon which they are turned to "root, or
die." These characteristic pigs are derisively called "shotes" by
those who have seen their lean, lank and hungry development. They are
awful counterparts of their pauper owners. It may be taken as an index
of the quality of the soil and the condition of the people, to observe
the condition of their live stock. Strange as it may appear, the
faithful dog is the only animal which appears to thrive on "piney
woods" land. The "piney woods" gopher, which may be not
inappropriately termed a "highland turtle," is a great desideratum in
the food supply of the pauper denizens of these portions of the South.
There is nothing enticing about the appearance of the gopher. But his
flesh, properly cooked, is passably palatable.

The poor white population of the South who live in the piney woods are
sunk in the lowest ignorance, and practice vices too heinous to be
breathed. They have no schools, and their mental condition hardly
warrants the charitable inference that they would profit much if they
were supplied with them. Still, I would like to see the experiment
tried. Their horrible poverty, their appalling illiteracy, their
deplorable moral enervation, deserve the pity of mankind and the
assistance of philanthropic men and a thoughtful government. Though
sunk to the lowest moral scale, _they are men_, and nothing should be
omitted to improve their condition and make them more useful members
of the communities in which they are now more than an incubus.

It may not be out of place here to state that the Kuklux Klan, the
White Liners League, the Knights of the White Camelia, and other
lawless gangs which have in the past fifteen years made Southern
chivalry a by-word and reproach among the nations of the earth, were
largely recruited from this idle, vicio