of such a citizen at Virginia’s expense.[16] Several relatives and neighbors resolved to accompany him in the migration.  His brother-in-law, Charles Hill, took charge of the carriages and the white families, while Dabney himself had the care of the wagons and the many scores of negroes.  The journey was accomplished without mishap in two months of perfect autumn weather.  Upon arriving at the new location most of the log houses were found in ruins from a recent hurricane; but new shelters were quickly provided, and in a few months the great plantation, with its force of two hundred slaves, was in routine operation.  In the following years Dabney made it a practice to clear about a hundred acres of new ground annually.  The land, rich and rolling, was so varied in its qualities and requirements that a general failure of crops was never experienced—­the bottoms would thrive in dry seasons, the hill crops in wet, and moderation in rainfall would prosper them all.  The small farmers who continued to dwell nearby included Dabney at first in their rustic social functions; but when he carried twenty of his slaves to a house-raising and kept his own hands gloved while directing their work, the beneficiary and his fellows were less grateful for the service than offended at the undemocratic manner of its rendering.  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. 160, 161; Robert Russell, North America (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 207.]