Planters, as well as pioneer farmers, were
exploiting the wilderness and building a new society under
characteristic western influences. Rude strength, a certain
coarseness of life, and aggressiveness characterized this society,
as it did the whole of the Mississippi Valley. [Footnote: Baldwin,
Flush Times in Ala.; cf. Gilmer, Sketches of Georgia, etc.] Slavery
furnished a new ingredient for western forces to act upon. The
system took on a more commercial tinge: the plantation had to be
cleared and made profitable as a purely business enterprise.
The slaves were purchased in considerable numbers from the older
states instead of being inherited in the family. Slave-dealers
passed to the southwest, with their coffles of Negroes brought from
the outworn lands of the old south. It was estimated in 1832 that
Virginia annually exported six thousand slaves for sale to other
states. [Footnote: Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, 50.] An English
traveler reported in 1823 that every year from ten to fifteen
thousand slaves were sold from the states of Delaware, Maryland, and
Virginia, and sent to the south.
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