[masraum]

Originally Posted by javadog

A more in-depth look:

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/07/01/197644761/word-watch-on-crackers

Very interesting article. I'd never heard of swamp cabbage or corn pone.

This seems to point at the whole slave thing as being bogus.

It was in the late 1800s when writers from the North started referring to the hayseed faction of Southern homesteaders as crackers. "[Those writers] decided that they were called that because of the cracking of the whip when they drove slaves," Ste. Claire said. But he said that few crackers would have owned slaves; they were generally too poor. (That of course, doesn't mean they weren't participants in the South's slave economy in other ways.)