White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

While John Locke is best known for his Two Treatises on Government, which declared life, liberty, and property to be natural rights, he also supported slavery and had a strong influence in drafting Fundamental Constitutions, which endorsed an aristocratic society. The latter work became the guide to establishing the framework of Carolina. The colony had a fixed class hierarchy with large grants of land given to eight proprietors, who ruled politically and had titles such as landgraves and caciques. Both titles inferred nobility. Locke additionally recommended that a court of heraldry preside over marriages to ensure class lines. Additionally, the development of a social class called leet-men was encouraged. These men would rank just above slaves in the social hierarchy, were “tied to the land and their lord” (45), and could be rented out for labor. Their children also belonged to the lord because class status was hereditary. In England, leet-men were unemployed men entitled to poor relief. Locke sought to make them a productive underclass in the colonies.

While a rigid class structure took hold in what is now South Carolina, it did not do so in North Carolina, which split from the original colony in 1712. Isenberg identifies North Carolina as critical to the establishment of the white trash narrative. The terrain in North Carolina, particularly along the Virginia border, was swampy. Many poor squatters set up camp there, and this colony originally lacked an elite planter class. North Carolina’s coastline was also amenable to smuggling and became a haven for pirates. Elites in Virginia who visited this territory labeled its inhabitants as idle and equated them with animals. The territory was difficult to rule, and many people there refused to pay taxes. The residents, who lived in extremely difficult conditions, were observed with “open sores visible on their bodies; … ghastly complexions as a result of poor diets; … missing limbs, noses, palates, and teeth” (55). The elite considered them a new and inferior breed of people.

Founded as a charitable undertaking, Georgia split from Carolina in 1732. It was intended to be a buffer between the English in South Carolina and the Spanish in Florida while also serving as a middle ground between the extremes of wealth and poverty in the Carolinas. Heavily influenced by James Oglethorpe, Georgia limited settlers’ acreage. Originally, it did not permit slaves and aspired to be “a sanctuary for ‘free white people’” (57). Alcohol was also illegal there. To protect the land distribution and heirs, Georgia instituted the feudal rule of “tail-male,” which required land to be inherited by the oldest male child. This rule prevented poor farmers from selling their land. In time, the settlers in Georgia had problems cultivating the land and sought to have slaves. Maintaining the vision of Georgia as a free colony became a losing battle, and slavery was legalized in 1750. Shortly thereafter, a planter elite class was established. Clearly, slavery and class identity were related. Free white laborers could not compete against land-rich slaveholders. They became the rural poor and stood apart as a “despised lower class” (63).

Benjamin Franklin condemned idleness. He argued that Americans would escape the extremes of wealth and poverty and enjoy “a middling stage, what he called a ‘happy mediocrity’” (65). Assuming that humans behaved similarly to ants and pigeons, Franklin claimed that people were “’uneasy in rest’” (66) and driven to move and procreate. He advocated for an increase in population, with one of his stories celebrating Miss Polly Baker for having children out of wedlock and poking fun at church rules. Just as land should be cultivated, so, too, should human fertility, per Franklin. His theory of increasing the population through breeding promised class stability through a wider distribution of wealth and the growth of a middle class (69). Franklin was against slavery, as he believed that it corrupted white men and made them idle.

In reality, the movement of people, westward or otherwise, did not equate to social mobility. People did not behave similarly to ants and pigeons. Nor did big families lead to a healthy population, as infant mortality rates were very high at that time. There was an entrenched class structure in Franklin’s Pennsylvania, with family name giving top status to proprietors such as the Penn family, and wealth giving elite status to merchants and others. Class was also signaled by appearance and reputation, with the top classes considered the “Better Sort” (72). Franklin saw himself this way. At the other end of the spectrum was the “Meaner Sort” (72). Associated with poverty, this group included those not free, such as indentured servants and slaves: "The meaner sort was thought to possess a rude appearance, dull mind, and unrefined manners” (73). They were the waste people, and Franklin did not want them in Pennsylvania’s militia. He held them in contempt. Per Franklin, such people had to be coerced to work and were expendable.

Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, is best known for his advocacy of revolution in January 1776 and his denunciation of monarchy. However, Paine ignored slavery and class divisions in the colonies. He expected commerce to smooth over class differences and feared that mobs would destroy social order if colonial leaders failed to stand up to the king. Believing that Americans were creating a new and distinct race, he argued that independence would eliminate idleness and reduce poverty significantly. The new American breed would be productive, and he did not mention the landless poor, the waste people.

Drawing upon his experience of living in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson hoped for a nation of farmers. He dreaded the growth of manufacturing and its attendant poverty. As President, Jefferson more than doubled the size of the new country via the Louisiana Purchase. The additional land would allow for an agrarian society. Assuming that human behavior was adaptable, Jefferson believed that the physical and social environment shaped people into distinct races and classes.

Jefferson was a gentleman farmer, similar to those in England. A member of the upper class, he was well educated and enjoyed a life of luxury. The state of Virginia was a class-based society, with more than one half of white men landless and fewer than 10% of white citizens owning over 50% of the land by 1770 (85). Unaware of his own class biases, Jefferson conceptualized class as “a creature of topography” (88). For him, classes were akin to the layers within soil.

Touting the virtues of an “accidental aristocracy of talent” (102), Jefferson proposed a telling educational bill in Virginia. In the bill, which did not pass, he proposed a hierarchical system of education in which only the few among the less fortunate who demonstrated genius would advance. He referred to the rest of them as “rubbish” (91), another name for waste people. The legislature was not interested in educating any members of the working class, so it established workhouses instead.

Ironically, recognizing the negative impact of slavery, Jefferson hoped for the Northwest US to be a land of free labor. Akin to the original dream for Georgia, this region would exist as a middle ground without the extremes of wealth and poverty. However, he expected an elite gentry class to educate farmers in scientific methods. Jefferson failed to recognize that many Americans in his class were partial to aristocracy. He falsely claimed in Europe that Americans knew no classes of men, yet the landless did not have voting rights in Virginia. Even when Jefferson succeeded in eliminating primogeniture, or the requirement that land holdings pass to the eldest male, many farmers sold their holdings to the large planters. Without the benefits of animals, slaves, and equipment, small farmers struggled to cultivate the land.

Jefferson celebrated a meritocracy of talent. Yet he, too, had contempt for those at the bottom. He divided society’s classes into a top tier of “[a]ristocrats, half breeds, [and] pretenders” (102), followed by an independent yeomanry and, at the bottom, “’the lowest feculum of beings called Overseers, the most abject, degraded and unprincipled race'" (103). These Overseers were represented as human waste. Oddly, Jefferson had no such negative words for the owners of slaves, such as himself, but only for those who supervised them in the employ of owners. The author of the Declaration of Independence, claiming natural rights for all, did not consider slaves or the landless as endowed with them.

The westward expansion of the US was considered essential to the achievement of national greatness. By 1800, 20% of the population lived on the frontier. The western territories, from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River, were akin to British colonies, populated with a “despised and impoverished class” (105). As the 19th century progressed, the people on the frontier acquired a mythic and more favorable image as hearty rustics, but the negative definitions remained.

In the North, the landless migrants were called squatters and, in the South, crackers. They were impoverished, uneducated, and not members of established churches. The term “cracker” appeared in the 1760s and was associated with “crack-brained” or foolish. They were described similarly to squatters but were associated with being “great boasters” (109) as well. Squatters and crackers were said to have crude habitations, boastful vocabulary, a distrust of civilization, an instinctive love of unbridled liberty, and degenerate patterns of breeding (112). By 1850, 35% of the population in the new Southern states was landless and, therefore, described in these terms. They were deemed a distinct class, worse than peasants, with “an impassable gulf” between them and other classes.

David Crockett advocated for this class of landless poor. Yet, his comic character and background undermined his advocacy of this legitimate cause. Initially a supporter of Andrew Jackson, the first Westerner to become President, Crockett quickly denounced Jackson because of the forced removal of the Cherokees and other tribes. Crockett condemned the unfair treatment of both squatters and indigenous peoples.

Culturally, Jackson represented the western frontier in the popular mind. He achieved his fame through violence as a military leader. While he secured victory at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, he was also accused of executing two British soldiers in Florida and six of his own men without cause. He had a fiery temper and was quick to retaliate against enemies. His marriage to Rachel was labeled adulterous because her divorce had not been finalized at the time. His wife died shortly before she was to accompany him to Washington. Prior to that, she was negatively described in the press as “fat” with tan skin, or lower class (127). Her death “intensified the incoming president’s hatred for his political enemies” (127). Although Jackson personified the western frontiersman in the popular mind, he was not a champion of squatters’ rights. He did not expand suffrage rights. By 1840, after he had left the presidency, both political parties embraced the appeal to the “common man.” However, the common man was not only romanticized but also put in his place in the social hierarchy: In popular culture, he was represented as the “Old Sug” character, a reasonable man who knew his place (129-30). Jackson’s presidency and those of subsequent presidents did nothing to change the drudgery that was the life of the squatter.