480-482.] [Footnote 12: Quoted in a speech in Congress in 1829, _Register of Debates_, V, 177.] As soon as the African trade was closed, the interstate traffic began to assume the aspect of a regular business though for some years it not only continued to be of small scale but was oftentimes merely incidental in character.

That is to say, migrating planters and farmers would in some cases carry extra slaves bought with a view to reselling them at western prices and applying the proceeds toward the expense of their new homesteads.

The following advertisement by William Rochel at Natchez in 1810 gives an example of this: "I have upwards of twenty likely Virginia born slaves now in a flat bottomed boat lying in the river at Natchez, for sale cheaper than has been sold here in years.[13] Part of said negroes I wish to barter for a small farm.

My boat may be known by a large cane standing on deck." [Footnote 13: Natchez, Miss., _Weekly Chronicle_, April 2, 1810.] The heyday of the trade fell in the piping times of peace and migration from 1815 to 1860.

Its greatest activity was just prior to the panic of 1837, for thereafter the flow was held somewhat in check, first by the hard times in the cotton belt and then by an agricultural renaissance in Virginia.