At the middle of the forties, with a rising cotton market, there began a strong and sustained advance, persisting throughout the fifties and carrying slave prices to unexampled heights.  By 1856 the phenomenon was receiving comment in the newspapers far and wide.  In the early months of that year the Republican of St. Louis reported field hand sales in Pike County, Missouri, at from $1,215 to $1,642; the Herald of Lake Providence, Louisiana, recorded the auction of General L.C.  Folk’s slaves at which “negro men ranged from $1,500 to $1,635, women and girls from $1,250 to $1,550, children in proportion—­all cash” and concluded:  “Such a sale, we venture to say, has never been equaled in the state of Louisiana.”  In Virginia, likewise, the Richmond Despatch in January told of the sale of an estate in Halifax County at which “among other enormous prices, one man brought $1,410 and another $1,425, and both were sold again privately the same day at advances of $50.  They were ordinary field hands, not considered no.  I. in any respect.”  In April the Lynchburg Virginian reported the sale of men in the auction of a large estate at from $1,120 to $2,110, with most of the prices ranging midway between; and in August the Richmond Despatch noted that instead of the customary summer dullness in the demand for slaves, it was unprecedentedly vigorous, with men’s prices ranging from $1,200 to $1,500.[23]

The Southern Banner of Athens, Georgia, said as early as January, 1855:  “Everybody except the owners of slaves must feel and know that the price of slave labor and slave property at the South is at present too high when compared with the prices of everything else.  There must ere long be a change; and ... we advise parties interested to ‘stand from under!’"[24] But the market belied the apprehensions.  A neighboring journal noted at the beginning of 1858, that in the face of the current panic, slave prices as indicated in newspapers from all quarters of the South held up astonishingly.  “This argues a confidence on the part of the planters that there is a good time coming.  Well,” the editor concluded with a hint of his own persistent doubts, “we trust they may not be deceived in their calculations."[25]

The market continued deaf to the Cassandra school.  When in March, 1859, Pierce Butler’s half of the slaves from the plantations which his quondam wife made notorious were auctioned to defray his debts, bidders who gathered from near and far offered prices which yielded an average rate of $708 per head for the 429 slaves of all ages.[26] And in January and February the still greater auction at Albany, Georgia, of the estate of Joseph Bond, lately deceased, yielded $2,850 for one of the men, about $1,900 as an average for such prime field hands as were sold separately, and a price of $958.64 as a general average for the 497 slaves of all ages and conditions.[27] Sales at similar prices were at about the same time reported from various other quarters.[28]