The recent work, _A Political History of Slavery_, by William Henry
Smith, will serve to illustrate the character of publications last
referred to. The author after pointing out that the Cotton and Rice
Producing States looked to the older commonwealth for supplies of
laborers, proceeds:
"Mr. Mercer, one of the ablest of the members of that remarkable
Convention (the Virginia Convention of 1829-30) said that the tables
of the natural growth of the slave population demonstrated ... that
an annual revenue of not less than a million and a half of dollars
had been derived from the exportation of a part of that increase.
Seven years later the _Virginia Times_ published an estimate of the
money arising from the sale of slaves exported during the year 1836
making the aggregate $24,000,000.00, which showed the enormous
profitableness of slave breeding."[212]
In support of this conclusion the author appends to his text three
notes, as follows:
First: "The _Times_ gave the whole number exported at 120,000 of
whom 80,000 were taken out of the state by their owners who removed
to new states and 40,000 were sold to dealers. The average price per
head was $600." (_Niles Register_, Vol. LI, p. 83.)
Second: "In the Legislature of Virginia in 1832 Thomas Jefferson
Randolph declared that Virginia had been converted into 'one grand
menagerie where men are reared for the market like oxen for the
shambles.' This was confirmed by Mr. Gholson, another member." (See
Reports in the _Richmond Whig_, 1832.)
Third: "In Virginia and other grain-growing states the blacks do not
support themselves, and the only profit their masters derive from
them is, repulsive as the idea may justly seem, in breeding them,
like other live stock, for the more Southern states." (American
Colonization Society, 1833.)