THE MOVEMENT OF NEGROES FROM THE EAST TO THE GULF STATES FROM 1830 TO 1850
The migration of Negroes to the Gulf States, during the years 1830 to 1850, was from the point of view of the Negroes themselves wholly involuntary. The blacks, being at that time preponderately slave, accompanied their masters to new homes in the South and Southwest or constituted the traffic of the domestic slave trade. Explanation of their migration must be sought, therefore, not in any unrest that may have been manifested by the Negroes, but rather in the causes that underlay the movement of the masters to new homes, and that enabled the domestic slave trade to become a profitable enterprise.
This migration, which in some ways assumed a peculiar aspect, bears a definite relation to three general circumstances. In the first place, there was a comparative decline in the productiveness of the seaboard border slave States. In the second, the accessibility to the new lands and practically virgin soils of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana invited the migration of innumerable planters from the border States to this new region. Finally, the rapidly increasing demand of the planters of the Gulf region for slave labor with which to cultivate cotton and other native products tremendously stimulated the domestic slave trade.
Although the seaboard border States, led by Virginia, sent south the bulk of the slaves, it must not be thought that the migration was alone from these States. In fact, as early as 1840,[1] not only Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Delaware, but also North Carolina became slave-exporting areas. Later, too, when the impoverishment of her lands made impossible the further extension of cotton culture, South Carolina joined with these other States and Georgia in exporting slaves to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and, after 1845, to Texas.
The decline in the productiveness of some of the seaboard border slave States has been ascribed to various causes. The failure to rotate crops and the lack of proper and sufficient fertilizer necessary to prevent an impoverishment of the soil some hold to be primary causes. The almost complete dependence upon unskilled, unintelligent slave labor, the conviction prevalent everywhere in slave territory that such labor made that of white men dishonorable, together with the failure to develop fully the manufacturing facilities at hand, have been also generally advanced to explain the decline, particularly, of Maryland and Virginia.
The chief agricultural staple of these States was tobacco. The characteristic soil of the region—a sandy loam—while warm and stimulating was easily exhausted,[2] especially when the planters had improper and inefficient fertilizer, traceable in some measure to a numerical deficiency of live stock, and the incessant culture of tobacco, without crop rotation. The price of tobacco, moreover, was throughout the years from 1818 to 1840 exceedingly low and, at the same time, the newer States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, as well as the Carolinas and Georgia, were producing large quantities of tobacco. The net result in Virginia and Maryland, therefore, was to make the culture of the plant exceedingly unprofitable.[3] It is held that the soil-exhausting character of tobacco culture, together with the falling prices of the plant, constituted the dominant factors in the decrease in value of agricultural lands of Virginia from $206,000,000 in 1816 to $80,000,000 in 1829.[4]
If the impoverishment of the land through tobacco culture was one factor in the declining productivity of Virginia and Maryland, the almost complete use of unskilled Negro slave labor, particularly in the former State, was decidedly another. Not only was slave labor costly, in that the non-producers, as well as the constant workers, had to be provided for, but also because of the overwhelming ignorance and inertia of such labor. "The grand secret of the difference between free labor and slave labor," wrote a former Virginia resident to the New York Times, "is that the latter is without intelligence and without motive."[5] A large tobacco planter of Virginia adds to this his testimony that the slave's incapacity to perform duties complex in nature, or requiring the least intelligence, precluded the cultivation there of the finer grades of tobacco.[6] While, therefore, the Negro slave was tractable and capable of hard work, he was, without strict supervision, a most unproductive worker. The universal employment of the slave despite his ignorance and inertia doubtless furnishes one clue to the failure of Virginia to exploit, in a reasonable degree, her manufacturing resources.[7]
This costly failure has been ascribed also to the reluctance of white labor to perform any duties to which slaves might be assigned. Slave owners and white laborers held in mutual repugnance the employment of white men at such tasks. According to Olmsted,[8] slave owners have held that the poor whites would refuse to do such work if possible, and, if compelled to submit, would do only so much as they found absolutely necessary. Under all circumstances they do such work reluctantly and "will not bear driving." "They cannot be worked to advantage with the slaves, and it is inconvenient to look after them, if you work them separately."
The natural consequence of the policy thus pursued by Virginia was, despite the fact of her early command over greater wealth and a larger population than the other States, to force her to descend, in part, from her former high estate.[9] A comparison of values of the agricultural lands of Virginia and Pennsylvania, in 1850, shows those of the latter, although of smaller acreage, to have a larger sale value an acre and a larger total value. A similar comparison between Virginia and New Jersey gives the same result.
That the conditions stated as obtaining in 1850 had long existed there seems to be no lack of evidence. Thomas Marshall made, in the Virginia legislature of 1831-'32, searching and detailed statements of the declining wealth and productivity of the State.[10] Such conditions as he pictured made plain that the planters of Virginia must either improve their lands by rehabilitating the soil, acquiring better farming implements, and improving their plow animals,[11] or migrate to the more promising lands elsewhere, or sell their slaves. The records show that by some planters one or another of these methods was adopted. Moreover, Maryland, a sister State of Virginia, because of the exhaustion of her soil by tobacco culture, found essential to her relief the same procedure.[12] With reference to Maryland, the census of 1840 shows an actual decrease over that of 1830 in the slave population[13] of the commonwealth.
To what parts, then, did these slaves go? The theatre of the largest expansion of slavery[14] was the "Western Cotton Belt," the section which shall be herein considered, comprehending parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Eastern Texas. The chief distinction between the soils of these States constituting the Atlantic Coastal Plain from Virginia to South Carolina and those of the "Western Cotton Belt" is the occurrence of extensive limestone belts in the latter. "The soils in these limestone belts are largely residual, calcareous and usually have a humus content, which gives the soil its black color"[15]—hence the name "Black Belt." The soils of these belts contain much clay and require careful preparation, but they are durable and extremely fertile. Moreover, an excellent water navigation[16] extending well into the region constituted an additional factor in the extension of the cotton culture and of Negro slavery into this territory.
According to Phillips,[17] the lands of the "Western Cotton Belt," most preferred in the early period, lay in two main areas, the soils of both of which were more lasting and fertile than those in the interior of the Atlantic States. "One of these areas formed a crescent across south-central Alabama, with its western horn reaching up the Tombigbee River into northeastern Mississippi." The soil of this area was of black loose loam. Everywhere it was thickly matted with grass and weeds, except where there was visible "limestone on the hill crests and prodigious cane brakes in the valleys." This tract known locally as the prairies or "Black Belt" was smaller than the other which extended along the Mississippi, on both sides, from northern Tennessee and Arkansas to the mouth of the Red River. This tract contained broad alluvial bottoms, as well as occasional hill districts of rich loam, the latter being especially noticeable around Natchez and Vicksburg. The broadest expanse of these bottoms, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, received but few migrants prior to the middle "thirties." The planters seem to have settled first in the bottoms, while the other choice lands were competed for by the large and smaller planters, as well as the poor farmers.
These lands were not only, by soil and climate, ideally suited to the production of cotton, but they were reasonably cheap in price. As late as 1849 there was much uncultivated, though fertile agricultural land in each of the cotton-growing States. At that time the total acreage and the area in use in several of the Gulf States were listed as follows:[18]
| State | Total No. of Acres | Acres Owned |
| Alabama | 32,462,080 | 15,911,520 |
| Louisiana | 29,715,840 | 6,263,822 |
| Mississippi | 30,174,080 | 15,811,650 |
There was under these circumstances small wonder that there migrated planters from the worn-out lands of the seaboard slave States, including the less fertile districts of Georgia,[19] and parts of Kentucky and Tennessee. In the absence of statistics giving the exact number of slaves migrating thus with their owners, the estimates of contemporaries and of later writers may be serviceable. The Virginia (Wheeling) Times said[20] that intelligent men of that day estimated the number of slaves exported from Virginia, during the year 1836, to be 120,000, of whom two-thirds (80,000) were carried south by their masters. The Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine (vol. ii, 411, July, 1837) gives the Natchez Courier as the authority for the estimate that during 1836 as many as 250,000 slaves, some of whom were accompanied by their masters, were transported from the older slave States to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.[21] P. A. Morse, of Louisiana, writing in 1857, says that "the augmentation of slaves within the cotton States was caused mostly by the migration of slave owners." On the basis of sources accessible to him, Morse estimated that three-fifths of the slaves removed from the border States to the farther South, from 1820 to 1850, migrated with their masters.[22] Accepting the "three-fifths estimate" of Morse, Collins has made deductions which indicate that approximately 15,900 slaves went south annually with their masters during the decade from 1830 to 1840; while during the next decade the annual migration was about 9,000.[23]
One of these migrant planters,[24] who, in 1835, left his tidewater estate in Gloucester County, Virginia, was Colonel Thomas S. Dabney. Prompted by the necessities of his family to seek more favorable soil, he sought land in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, finally settling in the one last mentioned. Colonel Dabney carried with him more than two hundred slaves, established himself on a plantation of four thousand acres, and each year contrived, by clearances, to put under cultivation an additional hundred acres. Planters of this type, with large numbers of slaves and sufficient funds to extend their holdings, tended to concentrate both slaves and lands in a few hands.
If the demand for new lands brought great numbers of slaves southward during the years from 1830 to 1850, there were also at work forces which caused many other slaves to be exported in the domestic slave traffic. The extension of the cotton culture in the more southern States, the increased exportation of cotton, the advancing profits therefrom, the development of large sugar plantations in Louisiana, and the decreased average working life of the slave created among the planters of this region an extraordinary demand for slave labor. At the same time such seaboard States as raised tobacco were suffering from a depression in the tobacco markets. The African slave trade, moreover, had been legally suppressed, thus rendering the seaboard and other border slave States the sole legal source of supply for the slave labor required by the lower South.
The income of some of the plantations on these fresh lands was immense.[25] It was considered not uncommon for a planter in Mississippi or Louisiana to receive an income of thirty thousand dollars annually. Extremely prosperous planters, it is said, took in from $80,000 to $120,000 in a single year. The enormous profits arising from such investments in the face of the unusual demand for slaves enabled prices of bondmen to rise inordinately high. Thus it was that a prime field hand, a Negro between the ages of twenty and thirty years, could command a price varying from five hundred to twelve hundred dollars,[26] and, in some cases, fourteen hundred dollars or more. In fact, slave traders rapidly grew rich from the traffic. One is reported as having earned thirty thousand dollars in a few months, while Franklin and Armfield, members of a firm with headquarters in Alexandria, are said to have earned more than thirty-three thousand dollars in a single year.[27]
The effect of the growing demand for labor, reflected in the high prices being offered for slaves, tended to concentrate the interest of the Virginia planter on his slaves, as it had been hitherto concentrated on tobacco.[28] Prompt and efficient methods were devised whereby Negroes were made ready for the market.[29] Olmsted was informed by a slave-holder that in the States of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, as much attention was paid to the breeding and growth of Negroes as had been hitherto given to the breeding of horses and mules.[30]
As to the precise number of slaves exported in response to the high prices paid for them, there seems to be no conclusive evidence. Resort must be had, therefore, to estimates of contemporaries and later writers. The New Orleans Advertiser of January 21, 1830, says: "Arrivals by sea and river within a few days have added fearfully to the number of slaves brought to the market for sale. New Orleans is the complete mart for the trade—and the Mississippi is becoming a common highway for the traffic."[31] In the summer of 1831, moreover, New Orleans reported, in one week, the arrival of 381 slaves, nearly all of whom were from Virginia.[32]
Not all of the exportations of slaves were by sea as is attested by records of Sir Charles Lyell, Basil Hall, and Josiah Henson.[32a] At a later period, Featherstonhaugh tells of an overland expedition of slaves to the South. Of this coffle of slaves he says:[33] "Just as we reached New River, in the early grey of the morning, we came up with a singular spectacle, the most striking one of the kind I have ever witnessed. 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, upon the Mississippi River, to work upon the sugar plantations in Louisiana. It resembled one of those coffles of slaves spoken of by Mungo Park, except that they had a caravan of nine waggons and single-horse carriages, for the purpose of conducting the white people, and any of the blacks that should fall lame, to which they were now putting their horses to pursue their march. The female slaves were, some of them, sitting on logs of wood, whilst others were standing, and a great many little black children were warming themselves at the fires of the bivouac. In front of them all and prepared for the march stood, in double file, about two hundred male slaves, manacled and chained to one another."
In the year 1831 there set in a reaction[34] against the importation of slaves into the Gulf States as a result of fear from troubles like Nat Turner's insurrection. Louisiana in 1831, and Alabama and Mississippi in 1832, passed laws prohibiting the importation of slaves into those States. The Alabama law was repealed in December, 1832, that of Louisiana in 1834, and that of Mississippi in 1846. Moreover, there is no evidence to show that these laws really checked importations. The fright engendered by the slave insurrection in Virginia was not sufficient to triumph over the practical demands for such labor. Collins holds that during the years from 1832 to 1836 the largest migration of Negroes to the South and the Southwest occurred.[35]
Since cotton was the prime factor in effecting the prosperity of the Southwest, and its extension of culture and advance in price dictated largely the demand for slaves, the number of slaves yearly exported may bear some relation to the price of cotton. After 1835, the price of cotton declined.[36] This, together with the panic of 1837, caused a falling-off in the domestic slave trade, except in 1843, and the low price of cotton which continued until 1846 and hindered the revival[37] of the traffic in men. In 1843, however, five thousand slaves were sold in Washington as compared with two thousand in the previous year. These increased sales were doubtless in some measure due to the decline in the price of tobacco,[38] and the renewed activity of the sugar industry, incident to a new duty on that product.[39] For the whole decade from 1840 to 1850, however, a decrease in the slave traffic is shown by the fact that the per cent of increase in the slave population in the cotton States was barely half as great as during the previous decade.[40]
Some time after 1845, however, the demand for slaves seems to have exceeded the supply. A writer in the Richmond Examiner of 1849 is quoted as having said: "It being a well accustomed fact that Virginia and Maryland will not be able to supply the great demand for Negroes which will be wanted in the South this Fall and Spring, we would advise all who are compelled to dispose of them in this market to defer selling until the sales of the present crop of cotton can be realized, as the price then must be very high for two reasons: first, the ravages of the cholera; and secondly, the high price of cotton."[41]
Three important events seem to have stimulated the slave trade during this period. First, there came the admission of Texas as a State in December, 1845; second, the increase in the price of cotton from 1845; and, third, the discovery of gold in California. The first of these opened to development a vast cotton country, which could be legally supplied with slave labor only through the domestic trade. The second event, the rise in the price of cotton, gave a new impetus to the production of cotton, and the California gold rush infused new life into all avenues of trade.[42] During this period and the decade following, Collins says that because of the great demand for slaves the price of them increased one hundred per cent; yet no evidence of a large increase in the traffic is shown.[43]
| Table No. 1 | Total Cotton Crop in Bales:[44] |
| 1833 | 1,070,000 |
| 1837 | 1,081,000 |
| 1840 | 2,178,000 |
| 1843 | 2,379,000 |
| 1849 | 2,727,000 |
Production of Cotton by States—(Pounds):[45]
| Table No. 2 | 1826 | 1833 | 1834 |
| Virginia | 25,000,000 | 13,000,000 | 10,000,000 |
| North Carolina | 18,000,000 | 10,000,000 | 9,000,000 |
| Louisiana | 38,000,000 | 55,000,000 | 62,000,000 |
| Alabama | 45,000,000 | 65,000,000 | 85,000,000 |
| Mississippi | 30,000,000 | 70,000,000 | 85,000,000 |
The statistics of cotton production and prices further elucidate this question. Table No. 1 shows a continuous increase in the production of cotton during the successive periods considered. Table No. 2 depicts the declining significance of Virginia and North Carolina as cotton-producing States and the shift of the lead of cotton production to the Gulf States. Table No. 3 shows the total production of cotton in the years considered and is significant, in that it emphasizes the important cotton-producing areas. During these years Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia, together, produced more than two-thirds of the total cotton crop.[47] Table No. 4 is self-explanatory, while Table No. 5 shows the yearly fluctuations of the average price of cotton after 1840.
Cotton Production in Pounds:[46]
| Table No. 3 | ||
| 1839 | 790,479,275 | |
| 1849 | 987,637,200 |
Average Price a Pound of Cotton in Five-Year Periods:[48]
| Table No. 4 | ||
| 1830-1835 | 10.9 cents | |
| 1835-1840 | 14.4 cents | |
| 1840-1845 | 8.1 cents | |
| 1845-1850 | 7.3 cents |
Average Price a Pound of Cotton:[49]
| Table No. 5 | ||
| 1835 | 16.8 cents | |
| 1836 | 16.8 cents | |
| 1840 | 8.6 cents | |
| 1841 | 10.2 cents | |
| 1842 | 8.1 cents | |
| 1843 | 6.1 cents | |
| 1844 | 8.1 cents | |
| 1845 | 6.0 cents | |
| 1846 | 7.9 cents | |
| 1847 | 10.1 cents | |
| 1848 | 7.6 cents | |
| 1849 | 6.5 cents |
In the years 1835 and 1836, the price is high relative to the later years in the two decades, and, assuming the continued demand for cotton, should have stimulated the domestic slave traffic by effecting a large demand for slaves at high prices. The lowest price is reached in 1845, followed by a rise till 1847, and then a decline in 1848 and 1849. That the demand for slaves was not at this time abated must be traceable to the fact that not more than three-fifths[50] of the slaves in the Cotton States were engaged in the production of cotton, while other occupations, notably sugar-production in Louisiana, demanded an increased quota.
The statistics of slave population are designed to show the increases of that type both in the States of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and in selected areas within these States. In 1850, the civil subdivisions, as counties or parishes, which possessed the greatest density of slave population in Texas, as well as in the other States named, were located in those areas of the most fertile soil for producing cotton or cane. This concentration is but an evidence of the influence of these factors in calling forth the slave migration to the Southwest.
Slave Population in the Gulf States:[51]
| Table No. 6 | 1830 | 1840 | 1850 |
| Alabama | 117,549 | 253,532 | 342,844 |
| Louisiana | 109,588 | 168,452 | 244,809 |
| Mississippi | 65,659 | 195,211 | 309,878 |
| Texas | ....... | ....... | 58,161 |
Per Cent. Slave Increase by Decades:[52]
| Table No. 7 | |||
| 1830-1840 | 1840-1850 | ||
| Alabama | 115.68 | 35.22 | |
| Louisiana | 53.70 | 45.32 | |
| Mississippi | 197.31 | 58.74 | |
| Texas | ...... | ...... |
Concentration of Migration upon Selected Areas:
Alabama:[53]
| Table No. 8 Counties | 1830 | 1840 | 1850 |
| Barbour | ..... | 5,548 | 10,780 |
| Chambers | ..... | 7,141 | 11,158 |
| Dallas | 7,160 | 17,208 | 22,258 |
| Greene | 7,420 | 16,431 | 22,127 |
| Loundes | ..... | 12,569 | 14,649 |
| Macon | ..... | 5,580 | 15,596 |
| Madison | 14,091 | 13,265 | 14,326 |
| Marengo | 2,987 | 11,902 | 20,693 |
| Montgomery | 6,450 | 15,486 | 19,427 |
| Perry | 4,331 | 10,343 | 13,917 |
| Pickens | 1,630 | 7,764 | 10,534 |
| Russell | ..... | 7,266 | 11,111 |
| Sumter | ..... | 15,920 | 14,831 |
| Wilcox | 4,070 | 8,292 | 11,835 |
Concentration of Migration upon Selected Areas (continued):
Mississippi:[54]
| Table No. 9 Counties | 1830 | 1840 | 1850 |
| Adams | 9,649 | 8,740 | 14,395 |
| Claiborne | 6,174 | 7,743 | 11,450 |
| Hinds | 3,197 | 13,375 | 16,625 |
| Jefferson | 6,702 | 9,176 | 10,493 |
| Lowndes | 1,066 | 8,771 | 12,993 |
| Madison | 2,167 | 11,533 | 13,843 |
| Marshall | ..... | 8,250 | 15,417 |
| Monroe | 940 | 6,460 | 11,717 |
| Noxubee | ..... | 7,157 | 11,323 |
| Warren | 4,183 | 10,493 | 12,096 |
| Wilkinson | 7,877 | 10,894 | 13,260 |
| Yazoo | 2,470 | 7,237 | 10,349 |
Concentration of Migration upon Selected Areas (concluded):
Louisiana[56] (concluded):
| Table No. 10 Parishes | 1830 | 1840 | 1850 |
| Ascension | 2,813 | 4,553 | 7,266 |
| Feliciana, E | 3,652 | 7,571 | 9,514 |
| Feliciana, W | 6,345 | 8,755 | 10,666 |
| Iberville | 4,509 | 5,887 | 8,606 |
| Madison | ..... | 3,923 | 7,353 |
| Natchitoches | 3,570 | 6,651 | 7,881 |
| Orleans | 16,603 | 23,448 | 18,068 |
| Point Coupee | 4,210 | 5,430 | 7,811 |
| Rapides | 5,321 | 10,511 | 11,340 |
| St. James | 5,027 | 5,711 | 7,751 |
| St. Landry | 5,057 | 7,129 | 10,871 |
| St. Mary's | 4,304 | 6,286 | 9,850 |
| Tensas | ..... | ..... | 8,138 |
Texas:[57]
| Table No. 11 | ||
| Counties | 1850 | |
| Austin | 1,549 | |
| Bowie | 1,641 | |
| Brazoria | 3,507 | |
| Cass | 1,902 | |
| Cherokee | 1,283 | |
| Fayette | 1,016 | |
| Fort Bend | 1,554 | |
| Grimes | 1,680 | |
| Harrison | 6,213 | |
| Lamar | 1,085 | |
| Matagorda | 1,208 | |
| Nacogdochea | 1,404 | |
| Nueces | 1,193 | |
| Red River | 1,406 | |
| Rusk | 2,136 | |
| San Augustine | 1,561 | |
| Walker | 1,301 | |
| Washington | 2,817 | |
| Wharton | 1,242 |
The average increase of slave population in the States considered was 103.30 per cent for the decade from 1830 to 1840, while that of the next decade was less than half so great, being 51.41 per cent.[55] These percentages, though both significant, cannot be explained wholly in terms of Negro migration. If the estimate of the increase in slave population by births over deaths be for each decade twenty-eight per cent,[58] and if from 1830 to 1840 forty thousand and from 1840 to 1850 fifty thousand foreign Negroes were imported[59] into the country as slaves, the number migrating from the more Northern States was materially smaller than at first appears to be the case. Phillips says that from 1815-1860, the volume of the slave trade by sea alone averaged from two thousand to five thousand[60] annually; but Dew, in 1832, estimated that six thousand slaves were annually exported from Virginia.[61] Collins, moreover, has made most elaborate calculations in this matter.[62] Accepting the estimate of Morse that three-fifths of the slaves who went south during the period from 1820 to 1850 migrated with their masters, Collins has deduced that the average annual export of Negroes for sale, during the decade from 1830 to 1840, was 10,600; and of the next decade, 6,000. On the basis of the principle underlying this calculation, it would follow that approximately 15,900 slaves migrated south with their masters during the earlier decade; while 9,000 went annually in this way during the decade from 1840 to 1850. Finally, if this principle of calculation be accepted, and the facts upon which it is based be well founded, approximately 26,500 Negroes found their way annually to the cotton and contiguous territory during the period from 1830 to 1840; while from 1840 to 1850 the annual number was 15,000.
What were some effects of this vast migration of Negro slaves to the Gulf States? The mere concentration of a large slave population in this region gains significance when it is considered in its numerical relation to the whites. Throughout the two decades from 1830 to 1850, there was a progressive increase in the white population here, and yet, in 1850, the whites in Alabama exceeded the slaves by less than one hundred thousand. In Louisiana the excess was 11,000; while in Mississippi the slaves were in the majority by some 14,000.[63] This situation was fraught with great possibilities. Would the slaves undertake a servile insurrection? To this dangerous aspect much thought was given, and thorough precautions were taken to protect the whites against such an upheaval. The immediate effect of this movement of the slaves to the Gulf Regions, however, was the final commitment of that section to a regime of slavery and the unification of a solid South based on interests peculiar to that section.
Although the emancipation of the blacks as a result of the Civil War has made possible the movement of not a few Negroes away from the Gulf Region, they still form a substantial portion of the population. They supply as in former days the bulk of the cotton hands. Many live in ignorance and in poverty, disfranchised and subjected to the economic exploitation of the ruling classes. They have therefore been a potent force in the creation of a social problem, the solution of which seems not yet to be found, except it appears in the present migration of these Negroes to industrial centers in the North.
A. A. Taylor