| 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
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Hammond, The Cotton Industry, I, 53 (cited from Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade, 12).
[2] Emerson, Geographical Influences in American Slavery, 18 (Bulletin, Amer. Geographical Society, xliii).