These people inhabit to a great extent the scrub-oak or
black-jack forests, the second growth which has sprung up on exhausted
plantations. Destitute of schools, churches, and newspapers, unable to
read or write, without culture, generally steeped in whiskey, their sole
property a cabin, and perhaps a few swine, which roam through the
forests, these Pariahs of society gain a precarious subsistence by
hunting, fishing, and occasional depredations upon the property of the
planters. During a brief visit to Columbia, in 1860, one of these
outcasts was arraigned before the Court of Sessions for stealing
black-jack from a plantation and selling it in the streets of Columbia;
and the judge in his flowing robes, while enlarging upon the offence,
facetiously remarked, that the prisoner had doubtless swallowed the
black-jack,--an allusion to the habits of the class which seemed well
understood by the bar.
The position of this class has thus far been improved by the war. In the
army the poor white has associated with the officer, far above him in
social life. His aid has been courted, he has received high wages in
Confederate notes, he has found better fare and clothing than he could
procure at home, and has been lured to the contest by the eloquent
appeals of the planter, by bitter attacks upon the North, and glowing
pictures of the ruin which the abolitionists would bring upon the South.
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