ee negroes on
board pleaded ignorance of the Virginia law against the bringing in of
slaves.[6]

[Footnote 1: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XXIV, 335,
336.]

[Footnote 2: Reprinted in Joshua Coffin, _An Account of Some of the
Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860), p. 15.]

[Footnote 3: "The Letters of James Habersham," in the Georgia Historical
Society _Collections_, VI, 22, 23.]

[Footnote 4: _New England Register_, XXIX, 248, citing Vermont _Statutes_,
1787, p. 105.]

[Footnote 5: U.B. Phillips, "Racial Problems, Adjustments and Disturbances
in the Ante-bellum South," in _The South in the Building of the Nation_,
IV, 218.]

[Footnote 6: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, VIII, 255.]

The federal census returns show that from 1790 onward the decline in the
number of slaves in the Northern states was more than counterbalanced by
the increase of their free negroes. This means either that the selling of
slaves to the southward was very slight, or that the statistical effect
of it was canceled by the northward flight of fugitive slaves and the
migration of negroes legally free. There seems to be no evidence that the
traffic across Mason and Dixon's line was ever of large dimensions, the
following curious item from a New Orleans newspaper in 1818 to the contrary
notwithstanding: "Jersey negroes appear to be peculiarly adapted to this
market--especially those that bear the mark of Judge Van Winkle, as it is
understood that they offer the best opportunity for speculation. We have
the right to calculate on large importations in future, from the success
which hitherto attended the sale."[7]

[Footnote 7: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Aug. 22, 1818, quoting the New
Orleans _Chronicle_, July 14, 1818.]

The internal trade at the South began to be noticeable about the end of the
eighteenth century. A man at Knoxville, Tennessee, in December, 1795, sent
notice to a correspondent in Kentucky that he was about to set out with
slaves for delivery as agreed upon, and would carry additional ones on
speculation; and he concluded by saying "I intend carrying on the business
extensively."[8] In 1797 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt met a "drove of
negroes" about one hundred in number,[9] whose owner had abandoned the
planting business in the South Carolina uplands and was apparently carrying
them to Charleston for sale. In 1799 there was discovered in the Georgia
treasury a shortage of some ten thousand doll