[Footnote 21:  E. g., The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey (North Carolina Historical Commission Publications, Raleigh, 1914), I, 93ff]

The next peak, 1837-1839, was in most respects like the preceding one, and the drop was quite as sudden and even more severe.  The distresses of the time in the district where they were the most intense were described in a diary of 1840 by a North Carolinian, who had journeyed southwestward in the hope of collecting payment for certain debts, but whose personal chagrin was promptly eclipsed by the spectacle of general disaster.  “Speculation,” said he, “has been making poor men rich and rich men princes.”  But now “a revulsion has taken place.  Mississippi is ruined.  Her rich men are poor, and her poor men beggars....  We have seen hard times in North Carolina, hard times in the east, hard times everywhere; but Mississippi exceeds them all....  Lands ... that once commanded from thirty to fifty dollars per acre may now be bought for three or five dollars, and that with considerable improvements, while many have been sold at sheriff’s sales at fifty cents that were considered worth ten to twenty dollars.  The people, too, are running their negroes to Texas and to Alabama, and leaving their real estate and perishable property to be sold, or rather sacrificed....  So great is the panic and so dreadful the distress that there are a great many farms prepared to receive crops, and some of them actually planted, and yet deserted, not a human being to be found upon them.  I had prepared myself to see hard times here, but unlike most cases, the actual condition of affairs is much worse than the report."[22]

[Footnote 22:  W.H.  Wills, “Diary,” in the Southern History Association Publications, VIII (Washington, 1904), 35.]

The fall of Mississippi slaves continued, accompanying that of cotton and even anticipating it in the later phase of the movement, until extreme depths were reached in the middle forties, though at New Orleans and in the Georgia uplands the decline was arrested in 1842 at a level of about $700.  The sugar planters began prospering from the better prices established for their staple by the tariff of that year, and were able to pay more than panic prices for slaves; but as has been noted in an earlier chapter, suspicion of fraud in the cases of slaves offered from Mississippi militated against their purchase.  A sugar planter would be willing to pay considerably more for a neighbor’s negro than for one who had come down the river and who might shortly be seized on a creditor’s attachment.