Description
“Exodus of Slaves” Under this head, the Democrat (St. Louis Globe-Democrat) has every now and then a paragraph noting the fact of the transfer of a few scores of slaves from Missouri to the Southern States where, in consequence of the prosperous conditions of those States, there is great demand for them.
The idea intended to be conveyed by theses notices is that slavery is becoming unpopular in Missouri, and the number is rapidly decreasing. This might be true, if it were not that the same traffic in slaves has been carried on for the last 30 years – every year presenting, from various causes, the fact of the transit of slaves from Missouri to the South, yet the number of slaves in Missouri has been increasing all the while. The late assessment of Randolph County shows an increase of 53 slaves over the number in that County in 1858 and this is true of many other counties. Republican of yesterday.
The usual reckless misrepresentation of the Republican is very palpable in the above. Selling and shipping negroes from Missouri to the South has, truly enough, been carried on for the last 30 years, and yet there is not a steamboat man on the Levee, who is in the Southern trade, but will say that this traffic has more than doubled, yea, trebled, in the last 2 or 3 years. “A few score of slaves from Missouri to the South,” says our neighbor. The shipments have amounted to hundreds per week for several months past.
The negroes are not only moving to the South by way of St. Louis and the Mississippi River but are carried off in large droves through Southwestern Missouri into Arkansas, many planters and drivers preferring this as the safest mode of transit. An instance came to our hearing the other day, where one of the wealthiest citizens of Platte County sent a drove of 200 slaves down through Western Missouri into Arkansas. We also have the estimate of a negro trader of the city, made in the hearing of a friend about 10 days since, in which year was carefully demonstrated that, if the slave exodus from Missouri continues at the present rate for the next 15 years, there will not be left 1000 in our borders.
The Republican cites a late assessment of Randolph County showing an increase of 53 slaves over the number in that county in 1858. We have not noticed any such assessment, but we have seen elite number of the Huntsville Citizen, the leading paper of Randolph County, in which it is stated that the slaves are rapidly disappearing from the county.
We have, besides, the following testimony of the rapid decimation of the slave population in Lafayette County, the largest, we believe, slaveholding district in the state. It is from the Lexington Express of recent date. ‘The movement of the nigger is Southward. Every day this fact is the better proven. There is scarcely a county in this part of the state that has not had its slave buyer and what is more, they are purchasing quite largely for the Southern market. Just the other day, Mr. White, a trader, shipped no less than 40 slaves on the Asa Wilgus (a steamboat), and he did not, we understand, take with him all he had purchased in this market during the last few weeks. This it is that is yearly decreasing our adult slave population. On Tuesday last, General Dorris (Dorris) of Platte County, passed through this city bound Southward with nearly 100 slaves. We did not understand whether they were for sale below, or whether the General designed working them himself at the South. It is immaterial so long as the fact is that we lose the negroes.’
We have from time to time noticed this heavy and increasing movement of the slaves away from Missouri as one of the signs of the times and cannot understand why the Republican should endeavor to deny or pervert facts so patent to our citizens, unless it proceeds from a rash and reckless hostility against free white emigration and the general welfare and advancement of the State.Date(s) of Creation
11/17/1859
