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

by Nancy Isenberg

The origin of “cracker” is no less curious than “squatter.” The “cracking traders” of the 1760s were described as noisy braggarts, prone to lying and vulgarity. One could also “crack” a jest, and crude Englishmen “cracked” wind. Firecrackers gave off a stench and were loud and disruptive as they snapped, crackled, and popped. A “louse cracker” referred to a lice-ridden, slovenly, nasty fellow.13 Another significant linguistic connection to the popular term was the adjective “crack brained,” which denoted a crazy person and was the English slang for a fool or “idle head.” Idleness in mind and body was a defining trait. In one of the most widely read sixteenth-century tracts on husbandry, Thomas Tusser offered the qualifying verse, “Two good haymakers, worth twenty cra[c]kers.” As the embodiment of waste persons, they whittled away time, producing only bluster and nonsense.14 American crackers were aggressive. Their “delight in cruelty” meant they were not just cantankerous but dangerous. As “lawless rascals” of the frontier, they had a lean and mean physique, like an inferior animal. Backwoods traders were easily compared to a “rascally herd” of deer. (“Rascal” was yet another synonym for trash.) As scavengers, crackers were feisty and volatile, or they could play the fool, like Byrd’s slow-witted lubbers.