Snuff Said (Tony Muncy)

Quite pervasive amongst the young men on the rivers and in the shops, chew has never been my thing. Can’t judge as I smoke cigars and occasionally a briar. But, the frequency of chew use causes concern. I’ll let the women in his life do the nagging.

“The large numbers of Southern men, and these were of the better class (officers in the Confederate army and planters, worth $20,000 or more, and barred from general amnesty) who presented themselves for the pardon of President Johnson, while they sat awaiting his pleasure in the ante-room at the White House, covered its floor with pools and rivulets of their spittle. An observant traveller in the South in 1865 said that in his belief seven-tenths of all persons above the age of twelve years, both male and female, used tobacco in some form. Women could be seen at the doors of their cabins in their bare feet, in their dirty one-piece cotton garments, their chairs tipped back, smoking pipes made of corn cobs into which were fitted reed stems or goose quills. Boys of eight or nine years of age and half-grown girls smoked. Women and girls “dipped” in their houses, on their porches, in the public parlours of hotels and in the streets.” A History of the United States since the Civil War Volume: 1. by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer; 1917. P 93 Quite good historical  company…bare floors and spittoons have given way to cups, empty beer cans and …………..