The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern States

by Winfield H. Collins

This law prohibited their exportation without a permit.[99] It seems to have been something more than merely incidental for it was amended in 1793, as follows:

"That from and after the first Tuesday of October next, the justice of the Court of General Quarter Sessions and Jail Delivery, or any two of them, shall have the like power to grant a licence or permit to export, sell or carry out for sale, any negro or mulatto slave from this State that five justices of the peace in open Sessions now have."[100]

We have evidence to show that, by 1802, Alexandria, in the District of Columbia, had become a sort of depot for the sale of slaves, and that men visited it from distant parts of the United States in order to purchase them.[101]

About this time slaves were in great demand and very high in Mississippi,[102] and probably, also, in the new States of Kentucky and Tennessee.[103] However, it is not to be supposed that the great increase of the slave population in these sections before 1815 was due, to any great extent, to the domestic slave trade. There were five causes which may be assigned for this increase, of which the domestic trade was, probably, among the least, if not the least. No doubt, the most important was the immigration of slave holders with their slaves.[104] This immigration was considerable: the white population of Tennessee and Kentucky nearly trebled between 1790 and 1800, and between 1800 and 1810 it about doubled, and the population of Mississippi more than quadrupled between 1800 and 1810. Slaves, also, increased in as great a ratio.[105] Second, we consider the South Carolina slave trade from 1804 to 1807 inclusive. From a speech of Mr. Smith of South were sold in the Carolinas, but that the most of Carolina in the United States Senate, December 8, 1820, we learn that only a small part of the negroes introduced in consequence of this trade them were bought by the people of the Western and Southwestern States and territories.[106] Third, was the natural increase. Fourth would be the illegal foreign slave trade,[107] and fifth is the domestic trade. It is impossible to more than approximate the relative importance of these factors.

However, it seems very unlikely that the domestic trade was of much consequence before 1815. Whatever impetus it may have received on account of the demand for slaves just prior to the South Carolina trade, must have been checked by the consequent heavy importation from abroad. For, on account of this, slaves fell in price, as it is said adults, at this time, generally sold in the Southwest at one hundred dollars each.[108]

If the domestic slave trade had assumed any importance, or even if it had been going on at all before 1815, it seems more than likely that it would have been remarked by travellers, many of whom, both English and American, visited the Southwest and other sections of the country during the period in question. But so far as we can find, none of them make any mention of it whatever.[109] The newspapers of the time, also, are silent in regard to the matter. Doubtless the rise and development of the trade was hindered or delayed by the War of 1812,[110] but almost immediately after the close of the war, it comes into notice and even prominence. In 1816 Paulding in his "Letters from the South" writes of it from personal observation, and also tells of a man who had even thus early made money in the business.[111]

At this time, indeed, conditions were very favorable to a growth of the domestic trade. The general prosperity and the high price of agricultural products, especially cotton and sugar,[112] caused a great demand for slave labor for the new and fertile lands of the South and Southwest. In 1817 and 1818 the buying up of negroes for these markets was fast becoming a regular business, and it was a very common thing to see gangs of them chained and marching toward the South.[113] They were collected from various places by dealers and shipped down the Mississippi River in flat-boats. Fourteen of these loaded with slaves for sale were seen at Natchez at once about this time.[114]

The statement was made that 8,000 slaves were carried into Georgia in 1817 from the Northern slave holding States.[115] It would seem probable that the greater part of these may have been introduced by immigrants. However, the slave trade must have been great, for on December 20, 1817, the Georgia legislature passed a law to prohibit at once the importation of slaves for sale.[116]

Between 1810 and 1820 slaves in the four States of Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana in round numbers increased from 202,000 to 332,000,[117] and in some of the other States the increase was about as great. During the same time the white population in the States named increased from 419,000 to 645,000.[118] By far the greater part of this increase took place after 1815. To prove this we will take Louisiana as an example. In 1810 she had a population of 76,500,[119] and in 1815 near the close of the year her population, according to Monette, did not exceed 90,000,[120] an increase of only 12,000; but in 1820 it amounted to 154,000, of which more than 73,000 were negro slaves.[121] It appears that the slaves in Louisiana increased only about 2,000 or 2,500 from 1810 to 1815, but between 1815 and 1820 there was an increase of about 37,000.[122] This wonderful increase in population in the West and Southwest is to be accounted for by the fact that after the close of the War of 1812 immigration again set in these directions, and, as most of the immigrants without doubt were from the older Southern States, they carried with them the slaves which they had in their native States.[123] Another source from which this region received slaves at this time was through the operation of the illicit foreign trade. It is probable that 10,000 or 15,000 a year were thus introduced.[124] It therefore seems that up to this time to the domestic trade is due probably only a minor part of the increase of the slave population of this section.