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A larger class of Southerners who joined with measured alacrity the armies of defense were the small farmers of the hills and poorer eastern counties; but the "sand-hillers" and "crackers," the illiterate and neglected by-products of the planter counties, were not minded to volunteer, though under pressure they became good soldiers because they dreaded the prospect of hordes of free negroes in the South more than they did the guns of the North.
Soon the mist deepened into cloud, and again the interminable rain began to fall. To add to our discomforts, our wagon would go no further, and once more we trudged along afoot. At noon we stopped for dinner at a house belonging to one of the "sand-hillers." This is the general name applied to the poor class of whites at the South.
Carleton moved up the poverty-stricken country through marsh, sea-sand, pitch-pine, swamp, and plain. Here and there were the shanties of sand-hillers, negro huts, and scores of long, lank, scrimped-up, razor-backed pigs of the Congo breed, as to color; but in speed, racers, outstripping the fleetest horses.
As the plantations expanded, these freedmen were pushed further and further back upon more and more sterile soil. They became "pine-landers" or "piney-woods-people," "sand-hillers," "knob-people," "corn-crackers" or "crackers," gaining a bare subsistence from corn planted and "tended" chiefly by the women and children, from hogs running wild in the forest, and from desultory hunting and fishing.
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