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Domestic Slave Trade Of The Southern States

CHAPTER II. THE CAUSES OF THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE. The prohibition of the foreign slave trade by the States and the Federal Government is the first thing to be considered in connection with the development of the internal slave trade. Although before 1808 all the States had passed laws to prohibit the introduction of slaves from without the United States, yet each State had the power to reopen the trade at will. South Carolina, perhaps, thinking it might be for the interest of the State, opened the foreign trade in 1803.[59] During the four years following so many slaves were imported that the market in the United States became overstocked and many of the negroes were sent to the West Indies for sale.[60] Had the States[Pg 22] retained the power to import, it is not probable that the domestic trade would ever have assumed any great importance. It is not likely that the people of the South and West would have paid high prices for the negroes from the border States when they could have been had from abroad for so much less. The great profits, too, which induced men to carry on the domestic trade would have been wanting. Assuming this, then, the consequent low price of slaves in the border slave States, added to the disinclination of many in these States to make merchandise of the negro, might have led, as the negroes increased and became a burden upon their masters, to gradual emancipation. In 1807, however, when Congress exercised its constitutional right and prohibited the importation of slaves from without the United States after January 1, 1808, the right of the individual States to import slaves from foreign countries was lost. It is interesting to note that only a few years before the passage of the Federal non-importation-slave act the vast territory of Louisiana had been purchased from France. The acquisition of[Pg 23] this territory had a wonderful influence upon the development and continuance of the internal slave trade. Of much less influence, and we might even say, of comparative insignificance, was the Florida cession of 1819. In a very short time this fertile region of the Louisiana purchase began to attract great numbers of immigrants who, it seems, often brought their slaves with them. But there were many who still had to be supplied.[61] To meet this demand' recourse was had, principally, to the exhausted plantations of Virginia and Maryland.[62] Tobacco, which had been a great agricultural staple in these States, had worn out the land. The price of tobacco, too, from about 1818 was very low and continued so until about 1840.[63] At the same time new States such as Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, the Carolinas and Georgia, had become great tobacco States. Such quantities came to be raised as to make the culture very un[Pg 24]profitable in Virginia and Maryland.[64] The condition with respect to this section could be no better illustrated than by a quotation from a speech of Thomas Marshall in the Virginia House of Delegates, January 20, 1832: "Mr. Taylor, of Carolina," he says, "had understood that 60,000 hogsheads of tobacco were exported from Virginia, when the whole population did not exceed 150,000. Had the fertility of the country by possibility remained undiminished, Virginia ought in 1810 to have exported 240,000 hogsheads, or their equivalent in other produce, and at present nearly double that. Thus the agricultural exports of Virginia in 1810 would, at the estimated prices of the Custom House at that time, have been seventeen millions of dollars and now at least thirty-four, while it is known that they are not of late years greater than from three to five millions.... "The fact that the whole agricultural products of the State at present, do not exceed in value the[Pg 25] exports eighty or ninety years ago, when it contained not a sixth of the population, and when not a third of the surface of that State (at present Virginia) was at all occupied, is, however, a striking proof of the decline of its agriculture. What is now the productive value of an estate of land and negroes in Virginia? We state as the result of extensive inquiry, embracing the last fifteen, years, that a very great proportion of the larger plantations, with from fifty to one hundred slaves, actually bring their proprietors in debt at the end of a short term of years, notwithstanding what would once in Virginia have been deemed very sheer economy, that much the larger part of the considerable landholders are content, if they barely meet their plantation expenses without a loss of capital; and that of those who make any profit, it will be none but rare instances, average more than one and a half per cent. on the capital invested. The case is not materially varied with the smaller proprietors. Mr. Randolph, of Roanoke, whose sayings have so generally the raciness and the truth of proverbs, has repeatedly said in Congress, that the time was coming when the mas[Pg 26]ters would run away from the slaves and be advertised by them in the public papers."[65] It seems that agriculture had taken a new start about 1816, probably owing to the fact that tobacco was very high, being from 8 to 15 cents per pound,[66] for Colonel Mercer in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829 said that in 1817 the lands of Virginia were valued at $206,000,000 and that negroes averaged $300 each, while by 1829 lands had decreased in value to $80,000,000 or $90,000,000 and negroes to $150 each.[67] But while agriculture was in such a discouraging condition in the worn out States, Louisiana and other States of the Southwest were being opened up and were looked on as the land of promise. Immigrants to that favored section wrote glowing accounts of the fertility of the country and of the delightful climate. An emigrant from Maryland writes from Louisiana in 1817: "Do not the climate, the soil and productions[Pg 27] of this country furnish allurements to the application of your negroes on our lands? In your States a planter, with ten negroes, with difficulty supports a family genteelly; here well managed, they would be a fortune to him. With you the seasons are so irregular your crops often fail; here the crops are certain, and want of the necessaries of life, never for a moment causes the heart to ache—abundance spreads the table of the poor man and contentment smiles on every countenance."[68] In marked contrast to the unprofitableness of slave labor in the older slave States was their immense profit when employed on the fresh lands of the Southwest. Some planters in this section had plantations thousands of acres in extent.[69] To cultivate them great numbers of slaves were required. If the crop were cotton one negro was needed for every three acres and these would yield cotton to the value of $240 to $260. The master realized upon each negro employed at least[Pg 28] $200 annually.[70] The income of some of these plantations was immense. It was not uncommon for a planter in Mississippi and Louisiana to have an income of $30,000, and some of them even $80,000 to $120,000 (1820).[71] The enormous profits caused slaves to be very high in this section and in great demand. There were only two possible sources of supply:—first, the illicit traffic already spoken of; second, the domestic slave trade. A good negro from twenty to thirty years of age would command from $800 to $1,200.[72] Indeed, it is stated that at one time during this early period they sold for as much as $2,000.[73] This fact in connection with the fact that in 1817 the average price of a negro in Virginia was only $300, and the depreciation by 1829 to $150, gives us the reason for the rise of the[Pg 29] domestic slave trade. It was over and again stated in the Virginia Legislature of 1832 that the value of negroes in Virginia was regulated not by their profitableness at home but by the Southwestern demand.[74] The great difference in the price of slaves in the buying States and the selling States was an inducement to a certain class of men to engage in the business of buying them up and carrying them South. The profits were from one-third to one-half on an average after expenses were paid.[75] Slave traders soon got rich. Williams, a Washington dealer, boasted in 1850 that he made $30,000 in a few months.[76] It is said the firm of Franklin & Armfield, of Alexandria, made $33,000 in 1829.[77] In 1834 Armfield, of this same firm, was reputed to be worth nearly $500,000 which he had accumulated in the business.[78] Ingraham tells of a man who had amassed[Pg 30] more than a million dollars in this traffic.[79] More instances might be given but this is enough to show that the traffic was profitable. The cultivation of rice[80] and sugar, especially sugar, used up slaves rapidly. As a consequence slaves were in demand in the rice and sugar sections, not only because of the expansion of these industries, but to take the place of those that died. In 1829 the statement was made in a report of the Agricultural Society of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that the annual loss of life on well conducted sugar plantations was two and one-half per cent. more than the annual increase. In 1830, the Hon. J.L. Johnson in a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury gave evidence of a thorough study of the subject and arrived at the same conclusion.[81] We come now to consider the one thing, the prime factor, which brought about the wonderful agricultural prosperity of the Southwest—cotton. Sugar and rice could only be grown in certain[Pg 31] limited sections. Rice principally in South Carolina and sugar in Louisiana; but the cotton field came to cover the larger part of nine great States. Until toward the end of the eighteenth century the production of cotton in this country was very small. In 1793, however, Eli Whitney invented his machine for separating the seed from the cotton. This soon revolutionized the industry. While the cotton crop of the United States in 1793 was only 5,000,000 pounds, by 1808 it had increased to 80,000,000, and remained about the same or rather declined during the war of 1812, but the very year peace was established its production went up to 100,000,000 pounds, and the year following (1816) to 125,000,000. By 1834 it had grown to 460,000,000.[82] During the whole of this period, with slight fluctuations, cotton continued high, but after 1835 it began to decline and reached low-water mark at the average price of 5¾ cents per pound in 1845, which was[Pg 32] scarcely the cost of production.[83] However, the crop of 1839 according to the census reports was 790,479,275 pounds, nearly double the crop of the five years previous. During the next decade though the price went up after 1845[84] the crop increased less than 200,000,000 pounds being only 987,637,200 in 1849, but during the following ten years it more than doubled, being 2,397,238,140 pounds in 1859.[85] Of this enormous crop the four States of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia produced more than two-thirds, while Virginia contributed about 1,400.[86] But Virginia and North Carolina in 1801 had produced more than two-fifths of the cotton raised in the country. In 1826 when, according to the official reports they reached their greatest production, Virginia grew 25,000,000 pounds and North Carolina 18,000,000, or nearly five times as much as in 1801, yet this proportion had fallen to about one-seventh. Eight years afterward[Pg 33] Virginia's crop had fallen to 10,000,000 pounds and North Carolina's to 9,500,000,[87] and their production continued to decline.[88] Hammond says that "the higher cost of raising cotton in the more northern latitudes, and the uncertainty of the plant reaching maturity before the arrival of the frosts, prevented the rapid growth of cotton culture in these States after 1830 which took place elsewhere, especially as the continual decline in the price of the staple only emphasized the disadvantages under which the planters of these States labored."[89] But while decline was noticeable in the Northern States, the States at the Southwest were going ahead by leaps and bounds. The same year (1843) Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, from which no cotton had been reported in 1801, produced together 232,000,000 pounds, while South Carolina increased its crops from 2,000,000 to 65,500,000 and Georgia from 10,000,000 to 75,000,000 pounds during the same time.[90] [Pg 34] As the cotton field extended of course the demand for labor increased and that labor was necessarily negro slave labor, for it was thought that the white man could not endure work under a tropical sun, while the organism of the negro was especially adapted to it.[91] As a consequence negroes were secured from every possible source. In short, negroes and cotton soon came to be inseparably associated. The amount of cotton that could be raised depended upon the number of negroes to be secured to work it. The value of a negro was measured by his usefulness in the cotton field.[92] De Bow estimated that in 1850 out of the 2,500,000 slaves in the Southern States about 1,800,000[93] of them, or nearly three-fourths were engaged in the cotton industry, leaving for all other purposes only about 700,000, or about the same number as there was in the whole United States in 1790, at which time the produc[Pg 35]tion of cotton was only 1,500,000 pounds.[94] Thus it is seen that while cotton demanded all the increase of slaves from whatever source from that time forward all other things merely held their own. However, if we subtract the number engaged in the sugar industry, which was 150,000[95] in 1850 for the reason that it was a new crop developed during the early part of the century,[96] it is noticed that other things lost. From this we conclude it was only natural that the surplus slave population of the older slave States where it was useless was to be drained off to the cotton States. Some of the Southern papers, notably the "Richmond Enquirer," over and again called attention to the relation of cotton and negroes. In 1859 it says: "The price of cotton it is well known pretty much regulates the price of slaves in the South, and a bale of cotton and a 'likely nigger' are about well balanced in the scale of pecuniary appreciation."[97] <div class="footnotes">FOOTNOTES: <div class="footnote"> [59] McCord: S.C. Statutes at Large, Vol. VII., p. 449. </div> <div class="footnote"> [60] Annals of Congress, 16 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 77. </div> <div class="footnote"> [61] (Ingraham): The Southwest, Vol. II., p. 223. </div> <div class="footnote"> [62] Alexander: Transatlantic Sketches, p. 250. Basil Hall: Travels in N. Am., Vol. II., p. 217. </div> <div class="footnote"> [63] Hunt's: Merchants' Magazine, Vol. VI., p. 473. </div> <div class="footnote"> [64] Speech of Thomas Marshall in Va., H. Del., 1832. Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 2, 1832. </div> <div class="footnote"> [65] Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 2, 1832. </div> <div class="footnote"> [66] Hunt's: Merchants' Magazine, VI., p. 473. </div> <div class="footnote"> [67] Proceedings and Debate of the Va. St. Con. Con., 1829-30, p. 178. </div> <div class="footnote"> [68] Niles' Reg., Sept. 13, 1817; for another such letter see Ibid., October 18, 1817. </div> <div class="footnote"> [69] Smedes: Memorials of a Southern Planter, p. 47. </div> <div class="footnote"> [70] Christian Scutz: Travels on an Inland Voyage, Vol. II., p. 186. David Blowe: Geographical, Commercial and Agricultural View of U.S., p. 618. </div> <div class="footnote"> [71] David Blowe: Geographical, Commercial and Agricultural View of U.S. of Am., p. 643. (1820?) </div> <div class="footnote"> [72] Ibid., p. 618. </div> <div class="footnote"> [73] Claiborne: Miss. as a Province, Territory and State, Vol. I., p. 144. </div> <div class="footnote"> [74] Mr. Gholson in Va. Leg. Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 24, 1832. Mr. Goode, ibid., Jan. 19, 1832. </div> <div class="footnote"> [75] (Ingraham): The Southwest, Vol. 4, p. 234. Vigne: Six Months in Am., p. 117. Alexander: Transatlantic Sketches, p. 230. </div> <div class="footnote"> [76] Liberator, Sept. 6, 1850. </div> <div class="footnote"> [77] Mary Tremain: Slavery in D.C., p. 50. </div> <div class="footnote"> [78] Abdy: Journal of a Residence and Tour in the U.S., Vol. II., p. 180. </div> <div class="footnote"> [79] (Ingraham): The Southwest. Vol. II., p. 245. </div> <div class="footnote"> [80] Basil Hall: Travels in North America, 218-223. </div> <div class="footnote"> [81] Stearns: Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin, 174-5. </div> <div class="footnote"> [82] Woodbury's Report: 24th Cong., 1st Sess. Ex. Doc. 146, p. 7. </div> <div class="footnote"> [83] De Bow's Review: Vol. XXIII., p. 475. </div> <div class="footnote"> [84] Hammond: Cotton Ind., Ap. 1. </div> <div class="footnote"> [85] Census of 1890. Statistics of Agri., p. 42. </div> <div class="footnote"> [86] Ibid. </div> <div class="footnote"> [87] Woodbury's Report, p. 13. </div> <div class="footnote"> [88] Census, 1890. Statistics of Agri., p. 42. </div> <div class="footnote"> [89] Hammond: The Cotton Industry, p. 49. </div> <div class="footnote"> [90] Woodbury's Report, p. 13. </div> <div class="footnote"> [91] Van Enrie: Negroes and Negro Slavery, p. 171. Parkinson: Tour in America, Vol. II., p. 421. </div> <div class="footnote"> [92] Olmsted: Cotton Kingdom. Vol. I., 15-16. Ibid.: Seaboard Slave States, p. 278. </div> <div class="footnote"> [93] De Bow: Compendium, 7th Census, p. 94. </div> <div class="footnote"> [94] Woodbury's Report, p. 7. </div> <div class="footnote"> [95] De Bow: Compendium, 7th Census, p. 94. </div> <div class="footnote"> [96] Ibid.: Industrial Resources, Vol. III., p. 275. </div> <div class="footnote"> [97] Richmond Enquirer, July 29, 1859. </div> </div> <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 36] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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