The many (Negro) ex‑slaves who recalled the lot of the small farmers and Poor Whites as Hard and Even as Bad as Their Own knew what they were talking about...The slaves saw enough abject poverty, disease, and demoralization among the Poor Whites...to see their own condition under Old Massa's protection as perhaps not the worst of evils." [55]
[55] Rather Be a guy Than a Poor White Man, Eugene D. Genovese; Slave Perceptions of Southern Yeoman and Poor Whites, in Toward a New View of America, pp. 79, 81‑82, 84, 90‑91