“Whether the North Carolina ‘dirt-eater,’ or the South Carolina ‘sand-hiller,’ or the Georgia ‘cracker,’ is lowest in the scale of human existence, would be difficult to say. The ordinary plantation negro seemed to me, when I first saw him in any numbers, at the very bottom of not only probabilities but also possibilities, so far as they affect human relations; but these specimens of the white race must be credited with having reached a yet lower depth of squalid and beastly wretchedness. However poor or ignorant, or unclean, or improvident he may be, I never yet found a negro who had not at least a vague desire for a better condition, an undefined longing for something called freedom, a shrewd instinct of self-preservation. These three ideas—or, let me say, shadows of ideas—do not make the creature a man, but they light him out of the bounds of brutedom. The Georgia ‘cracker,’ as I have seen him since leaving Milledgeville, seems to me to lack not only all that the negro does, but also even the desire for a better condition, and the vague longing for an enlargement of his liberties and his rights. I walked out into the country, back of Albany and Andersonville, when at those places, and into the country back of Fort Valley this morning; and, on each occasion, I fell in with three or four of these ‘cracker’ families. Such filthy poverty, such foul ignorance, such idiotic imbecility, such bestial instincts, such groveling desires, such mean longings; you would question my veracity as a man if I were to paint the pictures I have seen! Moreover, no trick of words can make plain the scene in and around one of these habitations; no fertility of language can embody the simple facts for a Northern mind; and the case is one in which even seeing itself is scarcely believing. Time and effort will lead the negro up to intelligent manhood, but I almost doubt if it will be possible to ever lift this ‘white trash’ into respectability.” CHAPTER XXXV. Atlanta—Georgia Phases of Rebel and Union Talk. From Knoxville I went direct to Atlanta, Georgia, the key of the great campaigns in the West, the memorable surrender of which re-elected President Lincoln, and proved the beginning of the end.