12

The Middle Class in the South was made up of much the same stock as
the bulk of the Northerners--that is of Scotch, Scotch-Irish and North
English--Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists and Dissenters
generally--who had been forced out of Great Britain by the intolerant
Episcopalians when the latter gained complete power after the
suppression of the Rebellion of 1745. With these were also the
descendants of the sturdy German Protestants who had been driven
from Europe during the religious wars when the Catholics gained the
ascendency in their particular country. These were the backbone of the
South, and had largely settled along the foothills of the Alleghanies
and in the fruitful valleys between the mountains, while the "White
Trash" lived either on the barren parts of the lowlands or the bare and
untillable highlands.

13

It is a grave mistake to confound these two classes of Non-Slaveholding
whites in the South. They were as absolutely unlike as two distinct
races, and an illustration of the habits of the two in migrating will
suffice to show this. It was the custom in the Middle Classes when a boy
attained majority that he chose for his wife a girl of the same class
who was just ripening into vigorous womanhood. Both boy and girl had
been brought up to labor with their own hands and to work constantly
toward a definite purpose. They had been given a little rudimentary
education, could read their Bibles and almanacs, "cipher" a little,
write their names and a letter which could be read. When quite a lad the
boy's father had given him a colt, which he took care of until it became
a horse. To this, his first property, was added a suit of stout homespun
cloth, which, with a rifle, an ax and some few other necessary tools,
constituted his sole equipment for married life. The girl had been given
a calf, which she had raised to a heifer; she had also a feather bed and
some blankets of her own making and a little stock of the most obvious
housekeeping utensils. With this simple outfit the young couple were
married, and either went in debt for a little spot of land near home or
pushed out into the new country. There they built a rude log cabin to
shelter them from the storm, and by the time their children had reached
the age they were when they married they had built up an unpretentious
but very comfortable home, with their land well cleared and fenced, and
stocked with cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry s