that once commanded from thirty to fifty dollars per acre
may now be bought for three or five dollars, and that with considerable
improvements, while many have been sold at sheriff's sales at fifty cents
that were considered worth ten to twenty dollars. The people, too, are
running their negroes to Texas and to Alabama, and leaving their real
estate and perishable property to be sold, or rather sacrificed.... So
great is the panic and so dreadful the distress that there are a great many
farms prepared to receive crops, and some of them actually planted, and yet
deserted, not a human being to be found upon them. I had prepared myself to
see hard times here, but unlike most cases, the actual condition of affairs
is much worse than the report."[22]
[Footnote 22: W.H. Wills, "Diary," in the Southern History Association
_Publications_, VIII (Washington, 1904), 35.]
The fall of Mississippi slaves continued, accompanying that of cotton and
even anticipating it in the later phase of the movement, until extreme
depths were reached in the middle forties, though at New Orleans and in the
Georgia uplands the decline was arrested in 1842 at a level of about $700.
The sugar planters began prospering from the better prices established for
their staple by the tariff of that year, and were able to pay more than
panic prices for slaves; but as has been noted in an earlier chapter,
suspicion of fraud in the cases of slaves offered from Mississippi
militated against their purchase.
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