APRIL 21, 1862:
A Northern soldier, David L. Day of Massachusetts, records his ungenerous thoughts
about Southerners living near New Bern, North Carolina in a letter he subtitles
“Poor White Trash” and “Snuff Dipping.”:
“Poor White Trash---Among
the white people about here, are very few who would be ranked among the first
or even second class. Nearly all of them are what is called the poor white
trash or clay-eaters. I am told they actually do eat clay, a habit they
contract like any other bad habit. Now I cannot vouch for the truth of this,
never having seen them eating it, but some of them look as though that was
about all they had to eat. They are an utterly ignorant set, scarcely able to
make themselves intelligible, and in many ways they are below the negroes in
intelligence and manner of living, but perhaps they are not wholly to blame for
it, the same principle that will oppress a black man, will a white one. They
are entirely cut off from the means of acquiring land or an education, even
though they wished to. Public schools are unknown here and land can only be
purchased by the plantation. That leaves them in rather a bad fix; poor,
shiftless and ignorant. Their highest ambition is to hunt, fish, drink whiskey
and toady to their masters. You speak to one of them and he will look at you in
a listless sort of way as though unable or undecided whether to answer or not.
Ask one of them the distance across the river, and he will either say he don’t
know, or "it is right smart." Ask one of them the distance to any
place or house out in the country, and he will tell you it is "a right
smart step," or "you go up yer a right smart step, and you will come
to a creek," and from there it will be so many looks and a screech;
meaning from the creek that number of angles in the road and as far beyond as
the voice will reach. They do not seem to have any intelligent idea about
anything, and in talking with the cusses, one scarcely knows whether to pity
them or be amused.
Snuff Dipping---The
women here have a filthy habit of snuff chewing or dipping as they call it, and
I am told it is practiced more or less by all classes of women. The manner of
doing it is simple enough; they take a small stick or twig about two inches
long, of a certain kind of bush, and chew one end of it until it becomes like a
brush. This they dip into the snuff and then put it in their mouths. After
chewing a while they remove the stick and expectorate about a gill, and repeat
the operation. Many of the women among the clay-eaters chew plug tobacco and
can squirt the juice through their teeth as far and as straight as the most
accomplished chewer among the lords of creation.”
The Confederacy enacts the “Partisan Ranger Act” to
encourage the recruitment of free-ranging guerrilla bands in order to harass
Union units, seize supplies, and disrupt rail and wire communications. Most of
the Partisan Rangers become little better than outlaws, except for Mosby’s Rangers
in eastern Virginia and McNeill’s Rangers in western Virginia. Due to its
encouragement of lawlessness, the Act is ewpealed on February 17, 1864,
excepting Mosby and McNeill’s men.
