e 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