mudsills

The mudsills are a little ahead of the chivalry this time.

Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 W. W. [Editor] Howe

At the opening of hostilities, he had joined a rebel company, inflated with the idea that in a few weeks, or months at farthest, the Northern "mudsills" would be overwhelmed and out of sight.

Hubert's Wife A Story for You Minnie Mary Lee

So long as you would act with them, so long as the Northern parasites would adhere to the Southern upas tree of Slavery, so long as the 'mudsills' of the North, as they arrogantly called you, would obey the orders of their Southern masters, so long as you would be their slaves, they would permit the President to be inaugurated.

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 Devoted To Literature And National Policy Various

All through certain sections of this country there are hundreds of humble dwellings built upon "mudsills," in other words, with no foundation or floor but the bare ground.

Shelters, Shacks and Shanties Daniel Carter Beard 1895

United States possess every element of vitality and genius possessed by their fellow citizens of other races, and any calculation of race possibilities in this country which assumes that they will remain indefinitely the "mudsills" only of society will prove more brittle than ropes of sand.

Black and White Land, Labor, and Politics in the South Timothy Thomas Fortune 1892

No country can be happy and prosperous whose "mudsills" live in squalor, want, misery, vice and death.

Black and White Land, Labor, and Politics in the South Timothy Thomas Fortune 1892

And to-day, as in the dark days of the past, this people are the bone and sinew of the South, the great producers and partial consumers of her wealth; the despised, yet indispensable, "mudsills" of her industrial interests.

Black and White Land, Labor, and Politics in the South Timothy Thomas Fortune 1892

Union against the pretensions of State sovereignty, the release of four million slaves, the implied honor put upon work, as against those who despised workmen as "mudsills," had had a powerful reaction upon the people of Great Britain.

Charles Carleton Coffin War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman William Elliot Griffis 1885

Southern woman, and a lady, scorning association with the 'mudsills' whom the upheaving of the revolution had brought to the surface of society.

Documenting the American South: The Southern Experience in 19-th Century America 1863

There are men who believe that they are solely engaged in putting down the rebellion; others are maintaining the disputed courage and honor of the "mudsills"; some are fighting to uphold our present Northern civilization and its institutions; and a handful have set out definitely to carry these into the South, to give them to the slave, and to the master also, in spite of himself.

History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II Matilda Joslyn Gage 1862