With the cotton boom in the Deep South came a spike in demand for enslaved laborers to work the fields. Although Congress abolished the foreign slave trade in 1808, Americans continued to smuggle Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. However, the domestic slave trade primarily supplied the necessary labor force. As the tobacco crop dwindled, former tobacco farmers in the older states of Virginia and Maryland found themselves with “surplus” enslaved laborers whom they were obligated to feed, clothe, and shelter. Some slaveholders responded to this situation by freeing enslaved laborers; far more decided to sell them.
