As the free farmers of the interior had been replaced in the
upland country of the south by the slaveholding planters, so now the
frontiersmen of the southwest were pushed back from the more fertile
lands into the pine hills and barrens. Not only was the pioneer
unable to refuse the higher price which was offered him for his
clearing, but, in the competitive bidding of the public land sales,
[Footnote: Northern Ala. (published by Smith & De Land), 249; Brown,
Hist. of Ala., 129-131; Brown, Lower South, 24-26.] the wealthier
planter secured the desirable soils. Social forces worked to the
same end. When the pioneer invited his slave-holding neighbor to a
"raising," it grated on his sense of the fitness of things to have
the guest appear with gloves, directing the gang of slaves which he
contributed to the function. [Footnote: Smedes, A Southern Planter,
67.] Little by little, therefore, the old pioneer life tended to
retreat to the less desirable lands, leaving the slave-holder in
possession of the rich "buck-shot" soils that spread over central
Alabama and Mississippi and the fat alluvium that lined the eastern
bank of the Mississippi.
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