Old Virginia and her neighbours

SOCIETY IN THE OLD DOMINION. 189freedmen of degraded type were by nature and experienceunfitted to perform any work ofa highersort, was of itself enough to keep them from doingany work at all, unless driven by impending starvation.As manual labour came to be more andmore entirely relegated to men of black and brownskins, this wretched position of the mean whitesgrew worse and worse. The negro slave mighttake a certain sort of pride in belonging to thegrand establishment of a powerful or wealthy master,and from this point of view society might besaid to have a place for him, even though he possessedno legal rights.security for the mean whites.There was no such haven ofIf the negro was likea Sudra, they were simply Pariahs. Crimes againstperson and property were usually committed bypersons of this class. They were loungers in tavernsand at horse-races, earning a precarious livelihood,or violent death by gambling and thieving ;or else they withdrew from the haunts of civilizationto lead half-sa\^age lives in the backwoods.In these people we may recognize a strain of theEnglish race which has not yet on American soilbecome extinct or absorbed. There can be littledoubt that the white freedmen ofdegraded typewere the progenitors of a considerable portion ofwhat is often called the " white trash " of theSouth. Originating in Virginia and Maryland,the greater part of it seems to have been graduallysifted out by migration to wilder regions westwardand southward, much to the relief of those colonies.As to the probable manner of its distribution,something will be said in the next chapter.