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.