Britney writes from Mississippi asking his brother’s help in finding him 15 slaves from neighboring Kentucky that he could import to Mississippi, now that he was “getting some property around me.”

         Between 1780 and 1861 entrepreneurial enslavers moved more than 1 million enslaved people by force from coastal and borderland communities to the deep south and west as the cotton economy expanded. Birney seeks to import slaves from Kentucky directly, himself, rather than purchase them in Mississippi, at potentially higher costs at auction. “The domestic slave trade rapidly transformed the southern states into the dominant force in the global cotton market, and cotton was the world’s most widely traded commodity at the time, as it was the key raw material during the first century of the industrial revolution. The returns from cotton monopoly powered the modernization of the rest of the American economy, and by the time of the Civil War, the United States had become the second nation to undergo large-scale industrialization. In fact, slavery’s expansion shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics of the new nation – not only increasing its power and size, but also, eventually, dividing US politics, differentiating regional identities and interests, and helping to make civil war possible.” – Baptist, Edward E., The Half Has Never Been Told Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

    “Dear Brother,

        It has now been 7 years since I have heard any thing from any of our family. None have written to me & I have written to none of them so things have gone on. I have been traveling part of the time & part of the time stationary. I have gotten through with A. O. Haris’ security debts & am now getting some property around me & will in a few years, if prudent be independent. I am about making a traid [sic] – but before I do it I want to learn what negroes from 14 to 35 years old can be bought at along the Ohio in Kentucky – If they can be procured for from 4 to 5 hundred dollars anywhere in that portion of country. I may spend several months there in the spring. Will you be kind enough to enquire about the prices at which such negroes can be had in that section of Kentucky & write me all the facts in relation to them – should it not give you too much trouble I would like to hear from you by March. I wish to get hands to cary [sic] on a farm. I want 15 good likely boys.