But then we should only have required some other mudsill upon which to build our society."

The term derives from a mudsill, the lowest threshold that supports the foundation for a building.

A mudsill like me trying to push in and help receive an awful grandee like Edward J. Billings?

In response, Brooks challenged Burlingame to a duel, stating he would gladly face him "in any Yankee mudsill of his choosing".

Abraham Lincoln argued forcefully against the mudsill theory, particularly in a speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1859 where he delineated its incompatibility with Free Soil.

Northern soldiers fighting in the Western Theater of the Civil War turned this derogatory term into one of self pride, as in "Western Mudsill".

Bolting of the mudsill to the foundation and application of plywood to cripple walls are a few basic retrofit techniques which homeowners may apply to wood-framed residential structures to mitigate the effects of seismic activity.

Southern pro-slavery theorists asserted that slavery eliminated this problem by elevating all free people to the status of "citizen", and removing the landless poor (the "mudsill") from the political process entirely by means of enslavement.

We are but more open and honest about the nature of our mudsill than other nations, which gladly exploit a worker's labor but, when he can no longer provide it, cast him aside like a used sheet of foolscap."

An obvious flaw lies in that there are no indications as to which class or race rightfully belongs to the mudsill other than the pre-supposed regional groups that were already in place at the "bottom", causing a circular argument.

As Mr. Hammond of South Carolina put it so pungently in the chambers of the U.S. Senate a few years ago, every society rests upon a mudsill of brute labor, from which the edifice of civilization arises.

In a speech to the Senate on March 4, 1858, Hammond developed his Mudsill Theory defending his view on slavery stating, "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.

This theory supposes that there must be, and supposedly always has been, a lower class for the upper classes to rest upon: the metaphor of a mudsill theory being that the lowest threshold (mudsill) supports the foundation for a building.