whiskey, their sole
property a cabin, and perhaps a few swine, which roam through the
forests, these Pariahs of society gain a precarious subsistence by
hunting, fishing, and occasional depredations upon the property of the
planters. During a brief visit to Columbia, in 1860, one of these
outcasts was arraigned before the Court of Sessions for stealing
black-jack from a plantation and selling it in the streets of Columbia;
and the judge in his flowing robes, while enlarging upon the offence,
facetiously remarked, that the prisoner had doubtless swallowed the
black-jack,--an allusion to the habits of the class which seemed well
understood by the bar.

The position of this class has thus far been improved by the war. In the
army the poor white has associated with the officer, far above him in
social life. His aid has been courted, he has received high wages in
Confederate notes, he has found better fare and clothing than he could
procure at home, and has been lured to the contest by the eloquent
appeals of the planter, by bitter attacks upon the North, and glowing
pictures of the ruin which the abolitionists would bring upon the South.
The Confederate notes have until recently proved sufficient for his
purposes, while other classes have supplied the means to prosecute the
war. But as the circle contracts and these notes prove worthless, food
and clothing, tobacco and whiskey will cease to be attainable; and when
the provost marshal has swept the plantation, and comes to the poor
man's cabin to take his last bushel of meal and to shoot down his swine
for the subsistence of the army, he will at length ask what he has to
gain from the further prosecution of the war.

When this crisis arrives, and it must be approaching, how can the
Southern army retain in its ranks either the poor white, the foreigner,
or the Northern clerk, whose sympathies have never been with the
Confederacy?

It may be said, that the Confederacy can continue the war by wealth
accumulated in former years. But that wealth vested in land, slaves, or
railways, now unproductive, or in banks whose funds have been advanced
to planters still under protest. This wealth will not suffice to
prosecute the war. Thus far it has been sustained by funds on hand, the
seizure of national forts, arms, and arsenals, by the appropriation of
debts due to Northern merchants, by supplies from Kentucky, Tennessee,
and Missouri, and by the issue of paper already greatly deprec