Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1847-08-27
The SudererS--Or, Sandhillers.


We find in the Winyan Intelligencer, pub
lished at Georgetown, S. c., the following
notice
The poor laborers on Black River, and in
that neighborhood, are in a state of starva-
ton, many Of them being without corn or
meal, and none of them having meat. The
occasion calls for the aid of the charitable,
and efforts will be made to obtain relief for
them"
VIII are these 'poor laborers ;"
There is a class of poor whites in the Car
%olinas, and most of the Southern States, Pc
culiar in character, and unknown generally
to the country. They are called Sand-hil2ers.
They are so called because they cluster to-
gether in the poorest regions, and there live
by hunting, fishing, raising a little stock,
making tar and charcoal, and attending to
poultry. They are very ignorant. Not one
out of fifty can read or write, and what is
worse, they change not as time winnows
down the old and supplies their places with
the young. AS is the sire, so is the son.
And these Sand-hillers are as peculiar in
dress and look as they are in character. You
know them whenever you see them. They
are marked in any crowd. Dressed always
in the plainest home-spun, homemade and
widely cut, often without shoes, but when
using them, wearing the ~coarsest kind, with
slouched hats of cheapest texture, having no
blood in their cheeks, their eyes black, and
their hair lank, they are as distinct a race as
the Indian. In some respects they are not
unlike them. They love 10 roam the woods,
and be free there to get together for frolic
or fun to fish and hunt; to chase wild cat
tie; but here the similarity ends; for they
are wanting in personal daring, and in that
energy of character which makes a man.
We do not know one Of them who ever gain.
ed station in society, or became distinguish
, ed by his deeds. And it is this class tc
whom the Georgetown I%ntelligencer alludes,
we conclude, when it speaks Of the " poo
laborers" on Black river and neighborhood
+ How came they in their present condition.
Their history is quickly told. 1t is a sac
t one, and we never think of it without sor
Y row.
r In the early settlements of the Carolinas
every body pressed upon the water courses
! Poor as we'll as rich, made lodgmen, upon
4 or near their banks. There were, at first, We
~ few negroes; consequently the latter nee
ded the labor of the former to house thei
Y crops, and clear their lands. All rot alons
e well, then. But the slave trahis, with il
G a%ccnrsed Ills, began soon after, and, by an
by, planters had their places stocked wit
slaves. AS these slaves increased, the poo
e began to feel their degradation. bitter ha
d tired grew up between these classes. 1t lie
often 10 violence. The larger planters, i
l. consequence, began to buy up the poor man
land, and the poor men, in turn, became anS
lous to sell. And they did so. But wher
l. were they to got South of Carolina was
d wilderness the good lands on the watt
courses, in the States were in the possessio
e of rich planters. They had no alternativ
left, as they thought, but to herd together o
IF the sand-hills, and there they and theirs sti
live.
= Their choice Of place is significant enoug
of their feeling, and of the cause Of their n
n moval. They made their location in neigl
e borhoods where neither large mol small plal
tiers could modest them. They got whe.
they could live without being disturbed
n worried by the continued sight of slaves
Now and then you will find a few of Il
d more debased sort gathered close by town
but generally they are some ten, OF fifteen
e twenty miles back, What the land wcu.