University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XI
THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE

IN the New England town of Plymouth in November, 1729,
a certain Thompson Phillips who was about to sail for
Jamaica exchanged a half interest in his one-legged negro
man for a similar share in Isaac Lathrop's negro boy who was
to sail with Phillips and be sold on the voyage. Lathrop was
meanwhile to teach the man the trade of cordwaining, and was
to resell his share to Phillips at the end of a year at a price
of £40 sterling.[1] This transaction, which was duly concluded in
the following year, suggests the existence of a trade in slaves
on a small scale from north to south in colonial times. Another
item in the same connection is an advertisement in the Boston
Gazette of August 17, 1761, offering for sale young slaves just
from Africa and proposing to take in exchange "any negro men,
strong and hearty though not of the best moral character, which
are proper subjects of transportation";[2] and a third instance
appears in a letter of James Habersham of Georgia in 1764 telling
of his purchase of a parcel of negroes at New York for work
on his rice plantation.[3] That the disestablishment of slavery in
the North during and after the American Revolution enhanced
the exportation of negroes was recited in a Vermont statute of
1787,[4] and is shown by occasional items in Southern archives.
One of these is the registry at Savannah of a bill of sale made at
New London in 1787 for a mulatto boy "as a servant for the
term of ten years only, at the expiration of which time he is to
be free."[5] Another is a report from an official at Norfolk to the

Governor of Virginia, in 1795, relating that the captain of a sloop
from Boston with three negroes on board pleaded ignorance of
the Virginia law against the bringing in of slaves.[6]

The federal census returns show that from 1790 onward the
decline in the number of slaves in the Northern states was more
than counterbalanced by the increase of their free negroes.
This means either that the selling of slaves to the southward
was very slight, or that the statistical effect of it was canceled
by the northward flight of fugitive slaves and the migration of
negroes legally free. There seems to be no evidence that the
traffic across Mason and Dixon's line was ever of large dimensions,
the following curious item from a New Orleans newspaper
in 1818 to the contrary notwithstanding: "Jersey negroes
appear to be peculiarly adapted to this market—especially those
that bear the mark of Judge Van Winkle, as it is understood
that they offer the best opportunity for speculation. We have
the right to calculate on large importations in future, from the
success which hitherto attended the sale."[7]

The internal trade at the South began to be noticeable about
the end of the eighteenth century. A man at Knoxville, Tennessee,
in December, 1795, sent notice to a correspondent in Kentucky
that he was about to set out with slaves for delivery as
agreed upon, and would carry additional ones on speculation;
and he concluded by saying "I intend carrying on the business
extensively."[8] In 1797 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt met a
"drove of negroes" about one hundred in number,[9] whose owner
had abandoned the planting business in the South Carolina uplands
and was apparently carrying them to Charleston for sale.
In 1799 there was discovered in the Georgia treasury a shortage
of some ten thousand dollars which a contemporary news
item explained as follows: Mr. Sims, a member of the legislature,
having borrowed the money from the treasurer, entrusted it
to a certain Speers for the purchase of slaves in Virginia.

"Speers accordingly went and purchased a considerable number
of negroes; and on his way returning to this state the negroes
rose and cut the throats of Speers and another man who accompanied
him. The slaves fled, and about ten of them, I think,
were killed. In consequence of this misfortune Mr. Sims was
rendered unable to raise the money at the time the legislature
met."[10] Another transaction achieved record because of a
literary effusion which it prompted. Charles Mott Lide of
South Carolina, having inherited a fortune, went to Virginia
early in 1802 to buy slaves, and began to establish a sea-island
cotton plantation in Georgia. But misfortune in other investments
forced him next year to sell his land, slaves and crops
to two immigrants from the Bahama Islands. Thereupon, wrote
he, "I composed the following valedictory, which breathes something
of the tenderness of Ossian."[11] Callous history is not concerned
in the farewell to his "sweet asylum," but only in the
fact that he bought slaves in Virginia and carried them to
Georgia. A grand jury at Alexandria presented as a grievance
in 1802, "the practice of persons coming from distant parts of the
United States into this district for the purpose of purchasing
slaves."[12] Such fugitive items as these make up the whole
record of the trade in its early years, and indeed constitute the
main body of data upon its career from first to last.

As soon as the African trade was closed, the interstate traffic
began to assume the aspect of a regular business though for
some years it not only continued to be of small scale but was
oftentimes merely incidental in character. That is to say, migrating
planters and farmers would in some cases carry extra slaves
bought with a view to reselling them at western prices and applying
the proceeds toward the expense of their new homesteads.
The following advertisement by William Rochel at Natchez in
1810 gives an example of this: "I have upwards of twenty
likely Virginia born slaves now in a flat bottomed boat lying in
the river at Natchez, for sale cheaper than has been sold here

in years.[13] Part of said negroes I wish to barter for a small farm.
My boat may be known by large cane standing on deck.

The heyday of the trade fell in the piping times of peace and
migration from 1815 to 1860. Its greatest activity was just
prior to panic of 1837, for thereafter the flow was held somewhat
in check, first by the hard times in the cotton belt and then
by an agricultural renaissance in Virginia. A Richmond newspaper
reported in the fall of 1836 that estimates by intelligent
men placed Virginia's export in the preceding year at 120,000
slaves, of whom at least two thirds had been carried by emigrating
owners, and the rest by dealers.[14] This was probably
an exaggeration for even the greatest year of the exodus. What
the common volume of the commercial transport was can hardly
be ascertained from the available data.

The slave trade was partly systematic, partly casual. For
local sales every public auctioneer handled slaves along with
other property, and in each city there were brokers buying them
to sell again or handling them on commission. One of these at
New Orleans in 1854 was Thomas Foster who advertised that
he would pay the highest prices for sound negroes as well as sell
those whom merchants or private citizens might consign him. Expecting
to receive negroes throughout the season, he said, he
would have a constant stock of mechanics, domestics and field
hands; and in addition he would house as many as three hundred
slaves at a time, for such as were importing them from other
states.[15] Similarly Clark and Grubb, of Whitehall Street in
Atlanta, when advertising their business as wholesale grocers,
commission merchants and negro brokers, announced that they
kept slaves of all classes constantly on hand and were paying the
highest market prices for all that might be offered.[16] At Nashville,
William L. Boyd, Jr., and R. W. Porter advertised as rival
slave dealers in 1854;[17] and in the directory of that city for 1860
E. S. Hawkins, G. H. Hitchings, and Webb, Merrill and Company
were also listed in this traffic. At St. Louis in 1859 Corbin

Thompson and Bernard M. Lynch were the principal slave
dealers. The rates of the latter, according to his placard, were
37 1/2 cents per day for board and 2 l/2 per cent. commission on
sales; and all slaves entrusted to his care were to be held at their
owners' risk.[18]

On the other hand a rural owner disposed to sell a slave
locally would commonly pass the word round among his neighbors
or publish a notice in the county newspaper. To this would
sometimes be appended a statement that the slave was not to be
sent out of the state, or that no dealers need apply. The following
is one of many such Maryland items: "Will be sold for
cash or good paper, a negro woman, 22 years old, and her two
female children. She is sold for want of employment, and will not
be sent out of the state. Apply to the editor."[19] In some cases,
whether rural or urban, the slave was sent about to find his or
her purchaser. In the city of Washington in 1854, for example,
a woman, whose husband had been sold South, was furnished
with the following document: "The bearer, Mary Jane, and her
two daughters, are for sale. They are sold for no earthly fault
whatever. She is one of the most ladylike and trustworthy
servants I ever knew. She is a first rate parlour servant; can
arrange and set out a dinner or party supper with as much taste
as the most of white ladies. She is a pretty good mantua maker;
can cut out and make vests and pantaloons and roundabouts and
joseys for little boys in a first rate manner. Her daughters' ages
are eleven and thirteen years, brought up exclusively as house
servants. The eldest can sew neatly, both can knit stockings;
and all are accustomed to all kinds of house work. They would
not be sold to speculators or traders for any price whatever."
The price for the three was fixed at $1800, but a memorandum
stated that a purchaser taking the daughters at $1000 might
have the mother on a month's trial. The girls were duly bought
by Dr. Edward Maynard, who we may hope took the mother
also at the end of the stipulated month.[20] In the cities a few

slaves were sold by lottery. One Boulmay, for example, advertised
at New Orleans in 1819 that he would sell fifty tickets
at twenty dollars each, the lucky drawer to receive his girl
Amelia, thirteen years old.[21]

The long distance trade, though open to any who would engage
in it, appears to have been conducted mainly by firms plying
it steadily. Each of these would have an assembling headquarters
with field agents collecting slaves for it, one or more vessels
perhaps for the coastwise traffic, and a selling agency at one of
the centers of slave demand. The methods followed by some
of the purchasing agents, and the local esteem in which they were
held, may be gathered by an item written in 1818 at Winchester
in the Shenandoah Valley: "Several wretches, whose hearts
must be as black as the skins of the unfortunate beings who
constitute their inhuman traffic, have for several days been impudently
prowling about the streets of this place with labels on their
hats exhibiting in conspicuous characters the words 'Cash for
negroes.'"[22] That this repugnance was genuine enough to cause
local sellers to make large concessions in price in order to keep
faithful servants out of the hands of the long-distance traders
is evidenced by the following report in 1824 from Hillsborough
on the eastern shore of Maryland: "Slaves in this county, and
I believe generally on this shore, have always had two prices,
viz. a neighbourhood or domestic and a foreign or Southern
price. The domestic price has generally been about a third less
than the foreign, and sometimes the difference amounts to one
half."[23]

The slaves of whom their masters were most eager to be rid
were the indolent, the unruly, and those under suspicion. A
Creole settler at Mobile wrote in 1748, for example, to a friend
living on the Mississippi: "I am sending you 1'Eveille and his
wife, whom I beg you to sell for me at the best price to be had.
If however they will not bring 1,500 francs each, please keep
them on your land and make them work. What makes me sell
them is that 1'Eveille is accused of being the head of a plot of

some thirty Mobile slaves to run away. He stoutly denies this;
but since there is rarely smoke without fire I think it well to
take the precaution."[24] The converse of this is a laconic advertisement
at Charleston in 1800: "Wanted to purchase one
or two negro men whose characters will not be required."[25] It
is probable that offers were not lacking in response.

Some of the slaves dealt in were actually convicted felons sold
by the states in which their crimes had been committed. The purchasers
of these were generally required to give bond to transport
them beyond the limits of the United States; but some of
the traders broke their pledges on the chance that their breaches
would not be discovered. One of these, a certain W. H. Williams,
when found offering his outlawed merchandize of twenty-four
convict slaves at New Orleans in 1841, was prosecuted
and convicted. His penalty included the forfeiture of the
twenty-four slaves, a fine of $500 to the state of Louisiana for
each of the felons introduced, and the forfeiture to the state
of Virginia of his bond in the amount of $1,000 per slave. The
total was reckoned at $48,000.[26]

The slaves whom the dealers preferred to buy for distant sale
were "likely negroes from ten to thirty years old."[27] Faithfulness
and skill in husbandry were of minor importance, for the
trader could give little proof of them to his patrons. Demonstrable
talents in artisanry would of course enhance a man's value;
and unusual good looks on the part of a young woman might
stimulate the bidding of men interested in concubinage. Episodes
of the latter sort were occasionally reported; but in at least one
instance inquiry on the spot showed that sex was not involved.
This was the case of the girl Sarah, who was sold to the highest
bidder on the auction block in the rotunda of the St. Louis
Hotel at New Orleans in 1841 at a price of eight thousand dollars.
The onlookers were set agog, but a newspaper man

promptly found that the sale had been made as a mere form in
the course of litigation and that the bidding bore no relation to
the money which was to change hands.[28] Among the thousands
of bills of sale which the present writer has scanned, in every
quarter of the South, many have borne record of exceptional
prices for men, mostly artisans and "drivers"; but the few
women who brought unusually high prices were described in
virtually every case as fine seamstresses, parlor maids, laundresses,
hotel cooks, and the like. Another indication against the
multiplicity of purchases for concubinage is that the great majority
of the women listed in these records were bought in family
groups. Concubinage itself was fairly frequent, particularly
in southern Louisiana; but no frequency of purchases for it as a
predominant purpose can be demonstrated from authentic
records.

Some of the dealers used public jails, taverns and warehouses
for the assembling of their slaves, while others had stockades of
their own. That of Franklin and Armfield at Alexandria, managed
by the junior member of the firm, was described by a visitor
in July, 1835. In addition to a brick residence and office, it comprised
two courts, for the men and women respectively, each
with whitewashed walls, padlocked gates, cleanly barracks and
eating sheds, and a hospital which at this time had no occupants.
In the men's yards "the slaves, fifty or sixty in number, were
standing or moving about in groups, some amusing themselves
with rude sports, and others engaged in conversation which was
often interrupted by loud laughter in all the varied tones peculiar
to negroes." They were mostly young men, but comprised a
few boys of from ten to fifteen years old. In the women's yard
the ages ranged similarly, and but one woman had a young child.
The slaves were neatly dressed in clothes from a tailor shop
within the walls, and additional clothing was already stored
ready to be sent with the coffle and issued to its members at the
end of the southward journey. In a yard behind the stockade
there were wagons and tents made ready for the departure.
Shipments were commonly made by the firm once every two

months in a vessel for New Orleans, but the present lot was to
march overland. Whether by land or sea, the destination was
Natchez, where the senior partner managed the selling end of
the business. Armfield himself was "a man of fine personal
appearance, and of engaging and graceful manners"; and his
firm was said to have gained the confidence of all the countryside
by its honorable dealings and by its resolute efforts to discourage
kidnapping. It was said to be highly esteemed even
among the negroes.[29]

Soon afterward this traveler made a short voyage on the Potomac
with a trader of a much more vulgar type who was carrying
about fifty slaves, mostly women with their children, to Fredericksburg
and thence across the Carolinas. Overland, the trader
said, he was accustomed to cover some twenty-five miles a day,
with the able-bodied slaves on foot and the children in wagons.
The former he had found could cover these marches, after the
first few days, without much fatigue. His firm, he continued,
had formerly sent most of its slaves by sea, but one of the vessels
carrying them had been driven to Bermuda, where all the negroes
had escaped to land and obtained their freedom under the
British flag.[30]

The scale of the coasting transit of slaves may be ascertained
from the ship manifests made under the requirements of the
congressional act of 1808 and now preserved in large numbers
in the manuscripts division of the Library of Congress. Its
volume appears to have ranged commonly, between 1815 and
1860, at from two to five thousand slaves a year. Several score
of these, or perhaps a few hundred, annually were carried as
body servants by their owners when making visits whether to
southern cities or to New York or Philadelphia. Of the rest
about half were sent or carried without intent of sale. Thus
in 1831 James L. Pettigru and Langdon Cheves sent from
Charleston to Savannah 85 and 64 slaves respectively of ages
ranging from ninety and seventy years to infancy, with obvious
purpose to develop newly acquired plantations in Georgia. Most

of the non-commercial shipments, however, were in lots of from
one to a dozen slaves each. The traders' lots, on the other hand,
which were commonly of considerable dimensions, may be somewhat
safely distinguished by the range of the negroes' ages,
with heavy preponderance of those between ten and thirty years,
and by the recurrence of shippers' and consignees' names. The
Chesapeake ports were the chief points of departure, and New
Orleans the great port of entry. Thus in 1819 Abner Robinson
at Baltimore shipped a cargo of 99 slaves to William Kenner and
Co. at New Orleans, whereas by 1832 Robinson had himself
removed to the latter place and was receiving shipments from
Henry King at Norfolk. In the latter year Franklin and Armfield
sent from Alexandria via New Orleans to Isaac Franklin
at Natchez three cargoes of 109, 117 and 134 slaves, mainly of
course within the traders' ages; R. C. Ballard and Co. sent
batches from Norfolk to Franklin at Natchez and to John Hogan
and Co. at New Orleans; and William T. Foster, associated with
William Rollins who was master of the brig Ajax, consigned
numerous parcels to various New Orleans correspondents.
About 1850 the chief shippers were Joseph Donovan of Baltimore,
B. M. and M. L. Campbell of the same place, David
Currie of Richmond and G. W. Apperson of Norfolk, each of
whom sent each year several shipments of several score slaves
to New Orleans. The principal recipients there were Thomas
Boudar, John Hogan, W. F. Talbott, Buchanan, Carroll and
Co., Masi and Bourk, and Sherman Johnson. The outward
manifests from New Orleans show in turn a large maritime distribution
from that port, mainly to Galveston and Matagorda Bay.
The chief bulk of this was obviously migrant, not commercial;
but a considerable dependence of all the smaller Gulf ports and
even of Montgomery upon the New Orleans labor market is
indicated by occasional manifests bulking heavily in the traders
ages. In 1850 and thereabouts, it is curious to note, there were
manifests for perhaps a hundred slaves a year bound for Chagres
en route for San Francisco. They were for the most part young
men carried singly, and were obviously intended to share their
masters' adventures in the California gold fields.

Many slaves carried by sea were covered by marine insurance.
Among a number of policies issued by the Louisiana Insurance
Company to William Kenner and Company was one dated
February 18, 1822, on slaves in transit in the brig Fame. It
was made out on a printed form of the standard type for the
marine insurance of goods, with the words "on goods" stricken
out and "on slaves" inserted. The risks, specified as assumed
in the printed form were those "of the sea, men of war, fire,
enemies, pirates, rovers, thieves, jettison, letters of mart and
counter-mart, surprisals, taking at sea, arrests, restraints and
detainments of all kings, princes or people of what nation, condition
or quality soever, barratry of the master and mariners, and
all other perils, losses and misfortunes that have or shall come
to the hurt, detriment or damage of the said goods or merchandize,
or any part thereof." In manuscript was added: "This
insurance is declared to be made on one hundred slaves, valued
at $40,000 and warranted by the insured to be free from insurrection,
elopement, suicide and natural death." The premium
was one and a quarter per cent. of the forty thousand dollars.[31]
That the insurers were not always free from serious
risk is indicated by a New Orleans news item in 1818 relating
that two local insurance companies had recently lost more than
forty thousand dollars in consequence of the robbery of seventy-two
slaves out of a vessel from the Chesapeake by a piratical
boat off the Berry Islands.[32]

Overland coffles were occasionally encountered and described
by travelers. Featherstonhaugh overtook one at daybreak one
morning in southwestern Virginia bound through the Tennessee
Valley and wrote of it as follows: "It was a camp of negro
slave drivers, just packing up to start. They had about three
hundred slaves with them, who had bivouacked the preceding
night in chains in the woods. These they were conducting to
Natchez on the Mississippi River to work upon the sugar plantations
in Louisiana. It resembled one of the coffles spoken of
by Mungo Park, except that they had a caravan of nine wagons

and single-horse carriages for the purpose of conducting the
white people and any of the blacks that should fall lame. . . .
The female slaves, some of them sitting on logs of wood, while
others were standing, and a great many little black children,
were warming themselves at the fire of the bivouac. In front
of them all, and prepared for the march, stood in double files
about two hundred men slaves, manacled and chained to each
other." The writer went on to ejaculate upon the horror of
"white men with liberty and equality in their mouths," driving
black men "to perish in the sugar mills of Louisiana, where the
duration of life for a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven
years."[33] Sir Charles Lyell, who was less disposed to moralize
or to repeat slanders of the Louisiana régime, wrote upon reaching
the outskirts of Columbus, Georgia, in January, 1846: "The
first sight we saw there was a long line of negroes, men, women
and boys, well dressed and very merry, talking and laughing,
who stopped to look at our coach. On inquiry we were told that
it was a gang of slaves, probably from Virginia, going to the
market to be sold."[34] Whether this laughing company wore
shackles the writer failed to say.

Some of the slaves in the coffles were peddled to planters and
townsmen along the route; the rest were carried to the main
distributing centers and there either kept in stock for sale at
fixed prices to such customers as might apply, or sold at auction.
Oftentimes a family group divided for sale was reunited by purchase.
Johann Schoepf observed a prompt consummation of the
sort when a cooper being auctioned continually called to the
bidders that whoever should buy him must buy his son also, an
injunction to which his purchaser duly conformed.[35] Both hardness
of heart and shortness of sight would have been involved
m the neglect of so ready a means of promoting the workman's
equanimity; and the good nature of the competing bidders doubtless
made the second purchase easy. More commonly the sellers

offered the slaves in family groups outright. By whatever
method the sales were made, the slaves of both sexes were subjected
to such examination of teeth and limbs as might be desired.[36]
Those on the block oftentimes praised their own
strength and talents, for it was a matter of pride to fetch high
prices. On the other hand if a slave should bear a grudge
against his seller, or should hope to be bought only by someone
who would expect but light service, he might pretend a disability
though he had it not. The purchasers were commonly
too shrewd to be deceived in either way; yet they necessarily took
risks in every purchase they made. If horse trading is notoriously
fertile in deception, slave trading gave opportunity for it
in as much greater degree as human nature is more complex and
uncertain than equine and harder to fathom from surface indications.

There was also some risk of loss from defects of title. The
negroes offered might prove to be kidnapped freemen, or stolen
slaves, or to have been illegally sold by their former owners
in defraud of mortgagees. The last of these considerations was
particularly disquieting in times of financial stress, for suspicion
of wholesale frauds then became rife. At the beginning of 1840,
for example, the offerings of slaves from Mississippi in large
numbers and at bargain prices in the New Orleans market
prompted a local editor to warn the citizens against buying cheap
slaves who might shortly be seized by the federal marshal at
the suit of citizens in other states. A few days afterward the
same journal printed in its local news the following: "Many
slaves were put up this day at the St. Louis exchange. Few if
any were sold. It is very difficult now to find persons willing to
buy slaves from Mississippi or Alabama on account of the fears
entertained that such property may be already mortgaged to the
banks of the above named states. Our moneyed men and speculators

are now wide awake. It will take a pretty cunning child
to cheat them."[37]

The disesteem in which the slavetraders were held was so
great and general in the Southern community as to produce a
social ostracism. The prevailing sentiment was expressed, with
perhaps a little exaggeration, by D. R. Hundley of Alabama in
his analysis of Southern social types: "Preëminent in villainy
and a greedy love of filthy lucre stands the hard-hearted negro
trader. . . . Some of them, we do not doubt, are conscientious
men, but the number is few. Although honest and honorable
when they first go into the business, the natural result of their
calling seems to corrupt them; for they usually have to deal
with the most refractory and brutal of the slave population,
since good and honest slaves are rarely permitted to fall into the
unscrupulous clutches of the speculator. . . . [He] is outwardly
a coarse, ill-bred person, provincial in speech and manners, with
a cross-looking phiz, a whiskey-tinctured nose, cold hard-looking
eyes, a dirty tobacco-stained mouth, and shabby dress. . . . He
is not troubled evidently with a conscience, for although he
habitually separates parent from child, brother from sister, and
husband from wife, he is yet one of the jolliest dogs alive, and
never evinces the least sign of remorse. . . . Almost every
sentence he utters is accompanied by an oath. . . . Nearly nine
tenths of the slaves he buys and sells are vicious ones sold for
crimes and misdemeanors, or otherwise diseased ones sold because
of their worthlessness as property. These he purchases for
about one half what healthy and honest slaves would cost him;
but he sells them as both honest and healthy, mark you! So
soon as he has completed his 'gang' he dresses them up in good
clothes, makes them comb their kinky heads into some appearance
of neatness, rubs oil on their dusky faces to give them a
sleek healthy color, gives them a dram occasionally to make them
sprightly, and teaches each one the part he or she has to play;
and then he sets out for the extreme South. . . . At every village
of importance he sojourns for a day or two, each day ranging his
'gang' in a line on the most busy street, and whenever a customer

makes his appearance the oily speculator button-holes him immediately
and begins to descant in the most highfalutin fashion
upon the virtuous lot of darkeys he has for sale. Mrs. Stowe's
Uncle Tom was not a circumstance to any one of the dozens he
points out. So honest! so truthful! so dear to the hearts of their
former masters and mistresses! Ah! Messrs, stock-brokers of
Wall Street—you who are wont to cry up your rotten railroad,
mining, steamboat and other worthless stocks[38] —for ingenious
lying you should take lessons from the Southern negro trader!"
Some of the itinerant traders were said, however, and probably
with truth, to have had silent partners among the most substantial
capitalists in the Southern cities.[39]

The social stigma upon slave dealing doubtless enhanced the
profits of the traders by diminishing the competition. The difference
in the scales of prices prevailing at any time in the cheapest
and the dearest local markets was hardly ever less than
thirty per cent. From such a margin, however, there had to be
deducted not only the cost of feeding, clothing, sheltering, guarding
and transporting the slaves for the several months commonly
elapsing between purchase and sale in the trade, but also allowances
for such loss as might occur in transit by death, illness,
accident or escape. At some periods, furthermore, slave prices
fell so rapidly that the prospect of profit for the speculator
vanished. At Columbus, Georgia, in December, 1844, for example,
it was reported that a coffle from North Carolina had been
marched back for want of buyers.[40] But losses of this sort were
more than offset in the long run by the upward trend of prices
which was in effect throughout the most of the ante-bellum
period. The Southern planters sometimes cut into the business
of the traders by going to the border states to buy and bring home
in person the slaves they needed.[41] The building of railways
speeded the journeys and correspondingly reduced the costs. The
Central of Georgia Railroad improved its service in 1858 by instituting

a negro sleeping car[42] —an accommodation which apparently
no railroad has furnished in the post-bellum decades.

While the traders were held in common contempt, the incidents
and effects of their traffic were viewed with mixed emotions. Its
employment of shackles was excused only on the ground of
necessary precaution. Its breaking up of families was generally
deplored, although it was apologized for by thick-and-thin champions
of everything Southern with arguments that negro domestic
ties were weak at best and that the separations were no more
frequent than those suffered by free laborers at the North under
the stress of economic necessity. Its drain of money from the
districts importing the slaves was regretted as a financial disadvantage.
On the other hand, the citizens of the exporting
states were disposed to rejoice doubly at being saved from loss
by the depreciation of property on their hands[43] and at seeing
the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but
even these considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia
at least, by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was
not enough to lessen materially the problem of racial adjustments,
that it was prime young workmen and women rather than culls
who were being sold South, that white immigration was not
filling their gaps, and that accordingly land prices were falling
as slave prices rose.[45]

Delaware alone among the states below Mason and Dixon's
line appears to have made serious effort to restrict the outgoing
trade in slaves; but all the states from Maryland and Kentucky
to Louisiana legislated from time to time for the prohibition
of the Inward trade.[46] The enforcement of these laws was called
for by citizen after citizen in the public press, as demanded by
"every principle of justice, humanity, policy and interest," and
particularly on the ground that if the border states were drained

of slaves they would be transferred from the pro-slavery to the
anti-slavery group in politics.[47] The state laws could not constitutionally
debar traders from the right of transit, and as a rule
they did not prohibit citizens from bringing in slaves for their
own use. These two apertures, together with the passiveness of
the public, made the legislative obstacles of no effect whatever.
As to the neighborhood trade within each community, no prohibition
was attempted anywhere in the South.

On the whole, instead of hampering migration, as serfdom
would have done, the institution of slavery made the negro population
much more responsive to new industrial opportunity than
if it had been free. The long distance slave trade found its
principal function in augmenting the westward movement. No
persuasion of the ignorant and inert was required; the fiat of
one master set them on the road, and the fiat of another set
them to new tasks. The local branch of the trade had its main
use in transferring labor from impoverished employers to those
with better means, from passive owners to active, and from
persons with whom relations might be strained to others whom
the negroes might find more congenial. That this last was not
negligible is suggested by a series of letters in 1860 from William
Capers, overseer on a Savannah River rice plantation, to
Charles Manigault his employer, concerning a slave foreman or
"driver" named John. In the first of these letters, August 5,
Capers expressed pleasure at learning that John, who had in
previous years been his lieutenant on another estate, was for
sale. He wrote: "Buy him by all means. There is but few
negroes more competent than he is, and he was not a drunkard
when under my management. . . . In speaking with John he
does not answer like a smart negro, but he is quite so. You had
better say to him who is to manage him on Savannah." A week
later Capers wrote: "John arrived safe and handed me yours
of the 9th inst. I congratulate you on the purchase of said negro.

He says he is quite satisfied to be here and will do as he has
always done 'during the time I have managed him.' No drink
will be offered him. All on my part will be done to bring John
all right." Finally, on October 15, Capers reported: "I have
found John as good a driver as when I left him on Santee. Bad
management was the cause of his being sold, and [I] am glad you
have been the fortunate man to get him."[48]

Leaving aside for the present, as topics falling more fitly
under the economics of slavery, the questions of the market
breeding of slaves in the border states and the working of them
to death in the lower South, as well as the subject of inflations
and depressions in slave prices, it remains to mention
the chief defect of the slave trade as an agency for the distribution
of labor. This lay in the fact that it dealt only in lifetime
service. Employers, it is true, might buy slaves for temporary
employment and sell them when the need for their labor
was ended; but the fluctuations of slave prices and of the local
opportunity to sell those on hand would involve such persons
in slave trading risks on a scale eclipsing that of their industrial
earnings. The fact that slave hiring prevailed extensively in all
the Southern towns demonstrates the eagerness of short term
employers to avoid the toils of speculation.