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

by Nancy Isenberg

Franklin and Jefferson were equally passionate about mobilizing the forces of reproduction. They saw population growth as a sign of national strength. Slavery, too, was to be measured as a numbers game. As Reverend Bolzius had observed, if slaves were encouraged to “breed like animals,” then poor whites could not reproduce at the same rate and hold on to their land or their freedom. It was already apparent that slavery and class identity were intertwined. Oglethorpe had connected free labor to the idea of a vital, secure, (re)productive society. Free white laborers, while adding to the military strength of a colony, could not compete economically with a class of land-engrossing slaveholders. What had been considered “peculiar” about Georgia—the banning of slavery—would ironically come to mean the precise opposite when in the nineteenth century slavery became the “peculiar institution” of the American South. All the while, the deeply ingrained English disgust for idleness persisted. The rural poor, though seen as a liability, became an unbanishable part of the American experience. Not only did free laborers exist in contrast to imported African slaves, but they also stood apart from useless white lubbers. Land was the principal source of wealth, and remained the true measure of liberty and civic worth. Hereditary titles may have gradually disappeared, but large land grants and land titles remained central to the American system of privilege. When it came to common impressio...