Lots of such sizes as these were of course exceptional.

In the packages of manifests now preserved in the Library of Congress the lists of from one to a dozen slaves outnumbered those of fifty or more by perhaps a hundred fold.
The western cotton belt not only had a greater expanse and richer lands than the eastern, but its cotton tended to have a longer fiber, ranging, particularly in the district of the "bends" of the Mississippi north of Vicksburg, as much as an inch and a quarter in length and commanding a premium in the market.

Its far reaching waterways, furthermore, made freighting easy and permitted the planters to devote themselves the more fully to their staple.

The people in the main made their own food supplies; yet the market demand of the western cotton belt and the sugar bowl for grain and meat contributed much toward the calling of the northwestern settlements into prosperous existence.[23] [Footnote 23: G.S.Callender in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, XVII, 111-162.] This thriving of the West, however, was largely at the expense of the older plantation states.[24] In 1813 John Randolph wrote: "The whole country watered by the rivers which fall into the Chesapeake is in a state of paralysis...The distress is general and heavy, and I do not see how the people can pay their taxes." And again: "In a few years more, those of us who are alive will move off to Kaintuck or the Massissippi, where corn can be had for sixpence a bushel and pork for a penny a pound.

I do not wonder at the rage for emigration.