White Trash

by Nancy Isenberg

  8.Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1763–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 239–40, 244, 246; Holly Mayer, “From Forts to Families: Following the Army into Western Pennsylvania, 1758–1766,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 130, no. 1 (January 2006): 5–43, esp. 13, 21, 23–24, 36–38, 40.

  9.On Colonel Henry Bouquet, see Bouquet to Anne Willing, Bedford, September 17, 1759, in The Papers of Colonel Henry Bouquet, ed. Sylvester E. Stevens et al., 19 vols. (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical Commission and Works Progress Administration, 1940–44), 3:371–72, 4:115–16.

  10.For various meanings of “squat” and “squatting,” see Oxford English Dictionary; Melissa J. Pawlikowski, “‘The Ravages of a Cruel and Savage Economy’: Ohio River Valley Squatters and the Formation of a Communitarian Political Economy, 1768–1782” (paper presented at the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, July 17, 2011, in possession of the author). On Hottentots, see “The Voyage of Peter Kolben, A.M., to the Cape of Good Hope; with an Account of the Manners and Customs of Its Inhabitants,” The Pennsylvania Herald, and General Advertiser, July 21, 1786. For a Cherokee woman sitting squat on the ground, see “A True Relation of the Unheard of Sufferings of David Menzies, Surgeon Among the Cherokees; Deliverance in South-Carolina,” The Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, March 6, 1767. For British soldiers and their fighting style, see “Annapolis, in Maryland, July 15,” [Boston] Weekly News-Letter, August 19, 1756; “New-York, March 27,” The New-York Gazette: or, The Weekly Post-Boy, March 27, 1758; “Extract of a Letter from Ticonderoga, July 31,” Pennsylvania Gazette, August 9, 1759; also see John K. Mahon, “Anglo-American Methods of Indian Warfare, 1675–1794,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45, no. 2 (September 1958): 254–75. For the importance of the legal meaning of standing, see Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 119–20.

  11.The colonial official also emphasized that “they enjoyed engaging in cruelty,” were horse stealers, and tried to stir up war by propagating “idle stories”; see Captain Gavin Cochrane to Lord Dartmouth, June 22, 1767, in M. Mathews, “Of Matters Lexicographical,” American Speech 34, no. 2 (May 1959): 126–30. On southern crackers, see Mr. Simpson and Mr. Barnard, Address Presented to Governor James Wright in March 1767, in The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, ed. Allen D. Chandler, 26 vols. (Atlanta, 1904), 14:475–76; and Mr. James Habersham to Governor James Wright, in The Letters of James Habersham 1756–1775, in The Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, 15 vols. (Savannah, 1904), 6:204; also cited in Delma E. Presley, “The Crackers of Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 60, no. 2 (Summer 1976): 102–16, esp. 102–3. For the cracker eye-gouger, see “Extracts of the Letter from a Camp Near Seneca, August 18,” Pennsylvania Ledger, October 26, 1776 (this report was republished in numerous papers in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts).

  12.Woodmason also called them “banditti, profligates, reprobates, and the lowest scum of the Earth.” He further noted that the people were intended to “set down as a barrier between the Rich planters and Indians.” See Richard Hooker, ed., The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953), 25, 27, 31–32, 52–54, 60–61, 154.

  13.For the reference to “cracking traders” used by Ensign Alexander Cameron, a British agent in South Carolina, who was describing white poachers in a letter to Captain Gavin Cochrane, dated February 3, 1765, see John L. Nichols, “Alexander Cameron, British Agent Among the Cherokee, 1764–1781,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 97, no. 2 (April 1996): 94–114, esp. 95, 97. Cameron appears to be the first person to use “cracking traders” before Cochrane called them crackers. Cameron was a native of Scotland, and first came to America as a soldier with General James Oglethorpe in 1738. For the term “louse cracker” (nasty, slovenly fellow), see New-England Courant, February 22–March 5, 1722. For the definition of “louse cracker,” see John Ebers, The New and Complete Dictionary of England and German Language, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1798), 363. For a “joke cracker,” as a person who wastes time, see “Cursory Thoughts,” Vermont Gazette, August 5, 1805. On nasty insults resembling smelly firecrackers, see Lloyd’s Evening Post, May 15–17, 1765. For a cracker as liar, or teller of marvelous tales, see “No. CXXXIV. Kit Cracker, a Great Dealer in the Marvelous, Describes Himself and His Adventures to the Observer,” in Richard Cumberland, The Observer: Being a Collection of Moral, Literary and Familiar Essays (London, 1791), 86–95.

  14.For “crack brained people” acting like crazy animals, see “No. III, To the Editors of the Charleston Courier,” United States Gazette, June 13, 1804; also see “crack brained son” in The Providence Gazette, and Country Journal, January 3, 1768; and for a parody of haymakers and crack-brained drinkers, see “Attention Haymaker!,” Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, or Worcester Gazette, July 20, 1796. For the use of the term “crack-brained” by prominent Georgia trustee the Earl of Egmont, see Robert G. McPherson, ed., The Journal of the Earl of Egmont, Abstract of the Trustees Proceedings for Establishing the Colony of Georgia, 1732–1738 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1962), 59. Reverend Woodmason also referred to a “crack’d the brain” North Carolinian; see Hooker, The Carolina Backcountry, 62; for “crack brained,” also see Oxford English Dictionary; and see Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1573; reprint ed., Oxford, 1848), 93.

  15.For the reference to their “delight in cruelty” and “lawless set of rascals,” see Gavin Cochrane to Lord Dartmouth, June 27, 1766, in Mathews, “Of Matters Lexicographical,” 127. On “rascal” as rubbish, camp followers, and lean and inferior animals, see Oxford English Dictionary; for “rascal” as “trash,” see Edward Philips, A New World of Words: or A General Dictionary (London, 1671), n.p.

  16.Benjamin Rush, “An Account of the Progress of Population, Agriculture, Manners, and Government in Pennsylvania, in a Letter to a Friend in England,” in Essays, Literary, Moral, Philosophical (Philadelphia, 1798), 214, 224–25. In 1816, the governor of the Michigan Territory described French settlers in the same way, as adopting the ways of Indians, living with periods of trade and then long periods of indolence, and neglecting their farms. They also were ignorant of “the common acts of domestic life.” He warned that until there was a new migration of people, the territory would be plagued with “indigent helpless people.” See Governor Lewis Cass to Secretary of War, May 31, 1816, in The Territorial Papers of the United States, vol. 10, The Territory of Michigan, 1805–1820, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942), 642–43. The same idea of purging the poor accompanied the migration of wealthier settlers into the western states. See John Melish (who wrote on Kentucky), Travels in the United States of America in the Years 1806 & 1807, and 1809, 1810, & 1811, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1812), 2:204.

  17.On land speculators and class power, see Lee Soltow, “Progress and Mobility Among Ohio Propertyholders, 1810–1825,” Social Science History 7, no. 4 (Autumn 1983): 405–26, esp. 410, 412–15, 418, 420; Andrew R. L. Cayton, “Land, Power, and Reputation: The Cultural Dimension of Politics in the Ohio Country,” William and Mary Quarterly 47, no. 2 (April 1990): 266–86, esp. 278; Rudolf Freud, “Military Bounty Lands and the Origins of the Public Domain,” Agricultural History 20, no. 1 (January 1946): 8–18, esp. 8. For the relocation of the top-down social structure from Virginia to Kentucky, and the rise of the merchant class, see Craig T. Friend, “Merchants and Markethouses: Reflections on Moral Economy in Early Kentucky,” Journal of the Early Republic 17, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 553–74, esp. 556–57, 572. On elite speculators using kinship networks to advance their class power, see Marion Nelson Winship, “The Land of Connected Men: A New Migration Story from the Early Republic,” Pennsylvania History 64 (Summer 1997): 88–104, esp. 90, 97.

  18.On old soldiers, see Peter Onuf, “Settlers
, Settlements, and New States,” in The American Revolution: Its Character and Limits, ed. Jack Greene (New York: New York University Press, 1987), 171–96, esp. 180–82. For Jefferson’s policy on squatters, see Thomas Jefferson to Secretary of War, April 8, 1804, in The Territorial Papers of the United States, vol. 13, The Territory of Louisiana-Missouri, 1803–1806, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948), 13:19; and Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, November 3, 1808, in The Territorial Papers of the United States, vol. 7, The Territory of Indiana, 1800–1810, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1939), 7:610–11; also see Bethel Saler, The Settlers’ Empire: Colonialism and State Formation in America’s Old Northwest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 48–50, 54; Van Atta, Securing the West, 77–78.

  19.On wretchedness and a poor and feeble population, see Mathew Carey, Essays on Political Economy, or, The Most Certain Means of Promoting Wealth, Power, Resources, and Happiness of Nations: Applied to the United States (Philadelphia, 1822), 177, 376. On public education and the poor, see Andrew R. L. Cayton, The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780–1825 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986), 77, 144–45; Van Atta, Securing the West, 110–12, 118, 210.

  20.On landlessness and limited mobility, see Gary Edwards, “‘Anything . . . That Would Pay’: Yeoman Farmers and the Nascent Market Economy on the Antebellum Plantation Frontier,” in Southern Society and Its Transformation, 1790–1860, eds. Susanna Delfino, Michele Gillespie, and Louis M. Kyriakoudes (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011), 102–30, esp. 108, 110; Craig Thompson Friend, “‘Work & Be Rich’: Economy and Culture on the Bluegrass Farm,” in The Buzzel About Kentuck, ed. Craig Thompson Friend (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 124–51, esp. 128–33. For land agents discouraging tenancy, see Robert P. Swierenga, “The ‘Western Land Business’: The Story of Easley & Willingham, Speculators,” Business History Review 41, no. 1 (Spring 1967): 1–20, esp. 12, 16; Rohrbough, The Land Office Business, 170–71, 175–76, 235–36. On the difficulty of tenants becoming large landowners (as compared to sons of the rich inheriting wealth), see Soltow, “Progress and Mobility,” 423.

  21.For the scandal swirling around Jackson’s divorce, see Norma Basch, “Marriage, Morals, and Politics in the Election of 1828,” Journal of American History 80, no. 3 (December 1993): 890–918; also see John Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 54–55; and Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York: Knopf, 2003), 11, 170, 172.

  22.For “Old Hickory” as a strong tree, see “Ode to the Fourth of July,” Salem [MA] Gazette, July 15, 1823; and for Jackson’s nickname meaning he was “tough, unyielding, and substantial,” see “Old Hickory,” Haverhill [MA] Gazette and Patriot, August 7, 1824.

  23.See Wilson’s poem “The Pilgrim,” and “Extract of a Letter from Lexington,” The Port-Folio (June 1810): 499–519, esp. 505, 514–15. On Wilson, see R. Cantwell, Alexander Wilson: Naturalist and Pioneer (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1961). Wilson applied the same criteria to studying birds and squatters; he wrote that the “character of the feathered race” could be determined by “noting their particular haunts, modes of constructing their nests”; see Edward H. Burtt Jr. and William E. Davis Jr., Alexander Wilson: The Scot Who Founded American Ornithology (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 11.

  24.Wilson, “Extract of a Letter from Lexington,” 519. For the symbolic meaning of homes in securing territorial claims, also see Anna Stilz, “Nations, States, and Territory,” Ethics 121, no. 3 (April 2011): 572–601, esp. 575–76.

  25.Cornelia J. Randolph to Virginia J. Randolph (Trist), August 17, 1817, PTJ-R, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. I would like to thank Lisa Francavilla of the Retirement Series for alerting me to this letter.

  26.See “Measuring for a Bed,” New Bedford [MA] Mercury, February 12, 1830 (reprinted from the Baltimore Emerald); also see “Sporting in Illinois,” Spirit of the Times; A Chronicle of Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature, and Stage (July 14, 1838): 169; and Ludwig Inkle, “Running from the Indians,” Magnolia; or Southern Monthly (August 1841): 359–62. esp. 360.

  27.See John M. Denham, “The Florida Cracker Before the Civil War as Seen Through Travelers’ Accounts,” Florida Historical Quarterly 72, no. 4 (April 1994): 453–68, esp. 460, 467–68; and Inkle, “Running from the Indians.”

  28.For a cracker shouting and squealing, see “The Tobacco Roller,” [Augusta, GA] Southern Sentinel, November 6, 1794. For the Mississippi squatter as a screamer, see “Taking the Mississippi,” Maine Farmer, October 26, 1848. For Hoosier anecdotes, see “A Forcible Argument,” New Hampshire Centinel, June 15, 1837; “The Hoosier Girls,” [Charleston, SC] Southern Patriot, October 12, 1837; “Hoosier Poetry,” [New Orleans] Daily Picayune, July 26, 1838; Barre [MA] Weekly Gazette, November 2, 1838; “From the National Intelligencer,” Macon Georgia Telegraph, April 7, 1840.

  29.See John Finley, “The Hoosier’s Nest,” Indiana Quarterly Magazine of History 1, no. 1 (1905): 56–57; also see William D. Pierson, “The Origins of the Word ‘Hoosier’: A New Interpretation,” Indiana Magazine of History 91, no. 2 (June 1995): 189–96.

  30.“Cracker Dictionary,” Salem [MA] Gazette, Mary 21, 1830; also see “Southernisms,” New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette, July 27, 1835; and “The Gouging Scene,” Philadelphia Album and Ladies Literary Portfolio, September 25, 1830; and both “jimber-jawed” and “gimbal-jawed” were derived from “gimbal,” meaning hinge or joint, and thus meant a protruding and loose jaw, see Oxford English Dictionary.

  31.“Cracker Dictionary.” Another writer defined a “squatter” with the motto of “‘here to-day—gone in a moment’”; see “Original Correspondence,” Boston Courier, November 25, 1830.

  32.M. J. Heale, “The Role of the Frontier in Jacksonian Politics: David Crockett and the Myth of the Self-made Man,” Western Historical Quarterly 4, no. 4 (October 1973): 405–23, esp. 405–9, 417; James R. Boylston and Allen J. Wiener, David Crockett in Congress: The Rise and Fall of the Poor Man’s Friend (Houston: Bright Sky Press, 2009), 2–3.

  33.Cynthia Cumfer, “Local Origins of National Indian Policy: Cherokee and Tennessee Ideas About Sovereignty and Nationhood, 1790–1811,” Journal of the Early Republic 23, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 21–46, esp. 25, 31; Heale, “The Role of the Frontier in Jacksonian Politics,” 416–17; and “Premium on Fecundity,” [Haverhill, MA] Essex Gazette, April 3, 1830.

  34.Davy Crockett’s Almanack of 1837 (Nashville, 1837), 40–43; Heale, “The Role of the Frontier in Jacksonian Politics,” 408; James Atkins Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1956), 68–69, 136, 144; Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London: Verso, 1990), 78, 83; Boylston and Wiener, David Crockett in Congress, 16. On Crockett’s advocacy for the poor man over the rich speculator, see “Remarks of Mr. Crockett, of Tennessee,” United States Telegraph, May 19, 1828; “Congressional Canvas,” [Columbia, SC] Columbia Telescope, June 12, 1829; and “Col. David Crockett, of Tennessee,” Daily National Intelligencer, June 22, 1831; and “Cracker Dictionary.”

  35.See “There Are Some Queer Fellows in Congress,” [Fayetteville, NC] Carolina Observer, March 20, 1828. On Crockett’s popularity, surpassing the government, Black Hawk, or a “caravan of wild varmints,” see an excerpt from his biography (supposedly written by Crockett), “Preface of Hon. David Crockett’s Biography,” United States Telegraph, February 22, 1834. On the comparison to the trained bear, see “The Indian Question,” Raleigh Register, and the North Carolina Gazette, July 1, 1834; for Frederick Douglass’s comparison of Crockett to the harlequin, see “Meeting in New York,” The North Star, June 8, 1849, and Todd Vogel, Re
writing White: Race, Class and Cultural Capital in Nineteenth-Century America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 25.

  36.Davy Crockett’s Almanack of 1837, 8, 17.

  37.For Crockett’s speech in defense of poor squatters, see Guy S. Miles, “Davy Crockett Evolves, 1821–1824, American Quarterly 8, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 53–60, esp. 54–55; also see Melvin Rosser Mason, “‘The Lion of the West’: Satire on Davy Crockett and Frances Trollope,” South Central Bulletin 29, no. 4 (Winter 1969): 143–45; also see Walter Blair, “Americanized Comic Braggarts,” Critical Inquiry 4, no. 2 (Winter 1977): 331–49.

  38.For alienating his Tennessee colleagues, see “Col. David Crockett, of Tennessee.” For his opposition to the Indian Removal Bill, see “The Indian Question.” For refusing to be Jackson’s dog, see “Politics of the Day,” Daily National Intelligencer, March 30, 1831; and “Col. Crockett. From the Boston Journal,” Indiana Journal, May 31, 1834; also see Megan Taylor Shockley, “King of the Wild Frontier vs. King Andrew I: Davy Crockett and the Election of 1831,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 56, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 158–69, esp. 161–62, 166.