“It thus became vital to the peace of the planters' minds that the frustrations of the "crackers," "sandhillers," or "poor white trash" be diminished or placated at all costs. This involved, first and foremost, keeping the bogeyman of race ever before the nonslaveholders' eyes, for whatever hatreds the poor whites nursed against the planters, they nursed still greater ones against blacks.”

—  Allen C. Guelzo

Source: 2010s, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012), Chapter One

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Allen C. Guelzo 82
American historian 1953

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