Delaware alone among the states below Mason and Dixon’s line appears to have made serious effort to restrict the outgoing trade in slaves; but all the states from Maryland and Kentucky to Louisiana legislated from time to time for the prohibition of the inward trade.[46] The enforcement of these laws was called for by citizen after citizen in the public press, as demanded by “every principle of justice, humanity, policy and interest,” and particularly on the ground that if the border states were drained of slaves they would be transferred from the pro-slavery to the anti-slavery group in politics.[47] The state laws could not constitutionally debar traders from the right of transit, and as a rule they did not prohibit citizens from bringing in slaves for their own use.  These two apertures, together with the passiveness of the public, made the legislative obstacles of no effect whatever.  As to the neighborhood trade within each community, no prohibition was attempted anywhere in the South.

[Footnote 46:  These acts are summarized in W.H.  Collins, Domestic Slave Trade, chap. 7.]

[Footnote 47:  Louisiana Gazette, Feb. 25, 1818 and Jan. 29, 1823; Louisiana Courier, Jan. 13, 1831; Georgia Journal (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 4, 1821, reprinted in Plantation and Frontier, II, 67-70; Federal Union (Milledgeville, Ga.), Feb. 6, 1847.]

On the whole, instead of hampering migration, as serfdom would have done, the institution of slavery made the negro population much more responsive to new industrial opportunity than if it had been free.  The long distance slave trade found its principal function in augmenting the westward movement.  No persuasion of the ignorant and inert was required; the fiat of one master set them on the road, and the fiat of another set them to new tasks.  The local branch of the trade had its main use in transferring labor from impoverished employers to those with better means, from passive owners to active, and from persons with whom relations might be strained to others whom the negroes might find more congenial.  That this last was not negligible is suggested by a series of letters in 1860 from William Capers, overseer on a Savannah River rice plantation, to Charles Manigault his employer, concerning a slave foreman or “driver” named John.  In the first of these letters, August 5, Capers expressed pleasure at learning that John, who had in previous years been his lieutenant on another estate, was for sale.  He wrote:  “Buy him by all means.  There is but few negroes more competent than he is, and he was not a drunkard when under my management....  In speaking with John he does not answer like a smart negro, but he is quite so.  You had better say to him who is to manage him on Savannah.”  A week later Capers wrote:  “John arrived safe and handed me yours of the 9th inst.  I congratulate you on the purchase of said negro.  He says he is quite satisfied to