As a consequence we should expect to note a corresponding briskness in the slave trade. Such, indeed, was the case. We have no reason to think that more slaves were ever exported to the South from the Northern slave States during any equal period of time than there were from 1832 to 1836 inclusive. Of these 1836 is easily the banner year.
In 1832 it was estimated by Prof. Dew that Virginia annually exported for sale to other States 6,000 slaves.[144] During the thirties, or even before the slave trade was carried on between the selling and buying States with about the same regularity as the exchanges of cotton, flour, sugar and rice.[145] Vessels engaged in the business advertised their accommodations. One trader, John Armfield, had three which were scheduled to leave Alexandria for New Orleans, alternately, the first and fifteenth of each month during the shipping season.[146]
That the trade had become extensive is evidenced by the newspapers. Up to 1820 it was very uncommon to find a trader's advertisement in a newspaper, but even before 1830 such advertisements had become very plentiful. One could hardly pick up a paper published in the selling States, especially those of the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Eastern Virginia, without finding one or more. These advertisements often continued from month to month and from year to year.[147]
An example or two may be interesting:
"Cash for Negroes:—I wish to purchase 600 or 700 negroes for the New Orleans market, and will give more than any purchaser that is now or hereafter may come into the market." Richard C. Woolfolk.[148]
"Cash for Negroes:—We will give cash for 200 negroes between the ages of 15 and 25 years old of both sexes. Those having that kind of property for sale will find it to their interest to give us a call." Finnall and Freeman.[149]
The number of slaves currently estimated to have been transported to the South and Southwest during 1835 and 1836 almost staggers belief. The "Maryville (Tenn.) Intelligencer" made the statement in 1836 that in 1835 60,000 slaves passed through a Western town on their way to the Southern market.[150] Also, in 1836, the "Virginia (Wheeling) Times" says, intelligent men estimated the number of slaves exported from Virginia during the preceding twelve months as 120,000 of whom about two-thirds were carried there by their masters, leaving 40,000 to have been sold.[151] The "Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine," July 1837, gives the "Natchez Courier" as authority for the estimate that during 1836, 250,000 slaves were transported to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas from the older slave States.[152] A committee, in 1837, appointed by the citizens of Mobile to enquire into the cause of the prevalent financial stringency stated in their report that for the preceding four years Alabama had annually purchased from other States $10,000,000 worth of slave property.[153]
When the panic of 1837 came upon Mississippi, it was thought, it seems, to have been caused through the amount of money sent out of the State in the purchase of slaves, and Governor Lynch, upon the petition of the people, convened the legislature in extra session, and in his message to it says:
"The question which presents itself and which I submit for your deliberation [is]—whether the passage of an act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into this State as merchandise may not have a salutary effect in checking the drain of capital annually made upon us by the sale of this description of property."[154]