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.