copper-heads

Updated: June 10, 2025

It would be worth watching, too, just to see how they got at that work. I should think they would find themselves up against a pretty stiff job, engineering down in those swamps. And then there must be barrels of snakes, too?" "Water moccasins and copper-heads mostly," said his friend cheerfully, "but you soon get so used to them that you don't mind them.

Francis Rolt-Wheeler - The Boy With the U.S. Census

I should be sorry to find that that provision was stricken out, because, before any portion of this can be put into operation, there will be, if not a Herod, a worse than Herod elsewhere to obstruct our actions. That side of the house will be filled with yelling secessionists and hissing copper-heads. Give us the third section or give us nothing.

William Horatio Barnes - History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

The Yankees sneeringly spoke of the round-crowned burghers of the Manhattoes as the "Copper-heads;" while the latter, glorying in their own nether rotundity, and observing the slack galligaskins of their rivals, flapping like an empty sail against the mast, retorted upon them with the opprobrious appellation of "Platter-breeches."

Washington Irving - Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete