Interesting thing about "root hog or die," is it basically means "fend for yourself or die."
It's worth noting that the idea of social reliance in the US was largely constricted to small communities, not the federally-available ones we now have today. It's worth noting, too, that there's not a lot the government could do. Suddenly we had millions of free people with nothing to start with, and we'd just finished an extremely brutal, bloody war in which half the country had tried to break away from the other half. I don't imagine the treasury's coffers were exactly bursting at that point. And whatever efforts could have been undertaken would've probably been piecemeal at best and ultimately a waste of resources. Buy a loaf of bread for everyone in the country to stave off hunger, it'll cost you millions of dollars and the only thing you accomplished was a single day of staving off starvation kind of thing.
Still, he could've said something less dickish...
It's worth noting that the idea of social reliance in the US was largely constricted to small communities, not the federally-available ones we now have today. It's worth noting, too, that there's not a lot the government could do. Suddenly we had millions of free people with nothing to start with, and we'd just finished an extremely brutal, bloody war in which half the country had tried to break away from the other half. I don't imagine the treasury's coffers were exactly bursting at that point. And whatever efforts could have been undertaken would've probably been piecemeal at best and ultimately a waste of resources. Buy a loaf of bread for everyone in the country to stave off hunger, it'll cost you millions of dollars and the only thing you accomplished was a single day of staving off starvation kind of thing.
Still, he could've said something less dickish...
