two hundred slaves, was
in routine operation. In the following years Dabney made it a practice to
clear about a hundred acres of new ground annually. The land, rich and
rolling, was so varied in its qualities and requirements that a general
failure of crops was never experienced--the bottoms would thrive in dry
seasons, the hill crops in wet, and moderation in rainfall would prosper
them all. The small farmers who continued to dwell nearby included Dabney
at first in their rustic social functions; but when he carried twenty of
his slaves to a house-raising and kept his own hands gloved while directing
their work, the beneficiary and his fellows were less grateful for the
service than offended at the undemocratic manner of its rendering. When
Dabney, furthermore, made no return calls for assistance, the restraint was
increased. The rich might patronize the poor in the stratified society
of old Virginia; in young Mississippi such patronage was an unpleasant
suggestion that stratification was beginning.[17] With the passage of years
and the continued influx of planters ready to buy their lands at good
prices, such fanners as did not thrive tended to vacate the richer soils.
The Natchez-Vicksburg district became largely consolidated into great
plantations,[18] and the tract extending thence to Tuscaloosa, as likewise
the district about Montgomery, Alabama, became occupied mostly by smaller
plantations on a scale of a dozen or two slaves each,[19] while the
non-slaveholders drifted to the southward pine-barrens or the western or
northwestern frontiers.

[Footnote 16: _Richmond Enquirer_, Sept. 22, 1835, reprinted in Susan D.
Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (2d. ed., Baltimore, 1888), pp.
43-47.]

[Footnote 17: Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 42-68.]

[Footnote 18: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York,
1860), pp. 20, 28]

[Footnote 19: _Ibid_., pp. 160, 161; Robert Russell, _North America_
(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 207.]

The caravans of migrating planters were occasionally described by travelers
in the period. Basil Hall wrote of one which he overtook in South Carolina
in 1828: "It ... did not consist of above thirty persons in all, of whom
five-and-twenty at least were slaves. The women and children were stowed
away in wagons, moving slowly up a steep, sandy hill; but the curtains
being let down we could see nothing of them except an occasional glance of
an eye, or a row of teeth