As we have seen, slaves when emancipated were required to leave the
state within one year from such date. Masters, ex-slaves and
colonization societies were, therefore, all earnest to achieve this
result. Hence arose the first cause for deportation—an influence and
custom which continued up to the Civil War.
The prospects of improving their fortunes by emigrating to the newer
states of Kentucky, Missouri and the South impelled large numbers of
slaveholders to leave Virginia. They carried their slaves with them
and hence arose a second cause which operated to deport each year many
slaves from the state.
The ever increasing difficulty of obtaining (especially on the part of
large slaveholders) any appreciable profit from the labor of their
slaves in the grain and tobacco fields of Virginia induced these
proprietors to purchase cotton and sugar plantations in the South and
thither from time to time to transport their slaves. These
slaveholders did not always emigrate themselves. They simply changed
the situs of their slaves, the latter being often accompanied by the
sons of their masters. Thus a third cause carried annually from
Virginia many hundreds of slaves.
The high prices which slaves commanded on the plantations of the far
South and in the sparsely settled portions of the Southwest engendered
the practice of buying slaves in Virginia and selling them for profit
in those sections. Despite the opprobrium attached to this custom
there were men willing to engage in the traffic and from choice or
necessity there were slaveholders who supplied at least a portion of
the demand. Hence, the fourth cause which contributed to the yearly
deportation of slaves from Virginia.
Neither the United States census nor any other official data avail to
fix the number of slaves which annually went from Virginia for each of
the four several reasons above referred to. It is evident, however,
that, as a rule, publicists not informed as to the conditions have
combined these exportations and attributed them all to the custom of
selling slaves. We are safe in concluding, therefore, that the number
of slaves _sold_ annually from Virginia has been grossly exaggerated;
that the custom was revolting to the moral sense of her people and
maintained against an outraged rather than a sympathetic public
sentiment.
Most of the writers who have laid this damaging accusation at the door
of the Virginia people have not attempted to fortify their position by
authority or data of any kind. Others have and a careful analysis of
the facts submitted will assist in determining the measure of truth
contained in the original charge.