General Discussion

Mudsill theory is the proposition that there must be, and always has been, a lower class or underclass for the upper classes and the rest of society to rest upon.

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

The theory was first articulated by James H. Hammond, a Democratic United States senator from South Carolina and a wealthy Southern plantation owner, in a speech on March 4, 1858. Hammond argued that every society must find a class of people to do menial labor, whether called slaves or not, and that assigning that status on a racial basis followed natural law, while the Northern United States' social class of white wage laborers presented a revolutionary threat.