Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. In White Trash, Nancy Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society. They were alternately known as "waste people," "offals," "rubbish," "lazy lubbers," and "crackers." By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called "clay eaters" and "sandhillers," known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement.
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