36 Negro Migration 



It is evident from these figures that all the Cotton States 

 except North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama were 

 offering higher wages in both 1867 and 1868 than Qeorgia. 

 In 1868 all the Cotton States were offering higher wages. 

 Several reasons may be assigned for this difference in wage 

 scale. In the first place, while land was plentiful in Geor- 

 gia, it was still more plentiful in Alabama, Mississippi, 

 Louisiana and Arkansas. The supply of free public land 

 had not been exhausted in these States. Again, the States 

 lying west of Sherman's line of march did not suffer any- 

 thing like the loss of wealth which those in his line of 

 march suffered. A still further factor is to be found in the 

 fact that land, in the Western States, having been more 

 recently put under cultivation, had not suffered as much 

 deterioration from the wasteful cultivation of slave labor. 

 It was more productive. In the long run, almost every 

 other State could afford to pay more for Negro labor imme- 

 diately after emancipation than Georgia. 



In addition South Georgia was competing against the old 

 plantation area for labor. Brooks states that the agent of 

 the Freedmen's Bureau in Southwest Georgia wrote to Gen- 

 eral Tillson in January, 1866, that there was a demand for 

 labor in Baker County, and asked that four or five hundred 

 hands be sent. Three to five hundred, he said, were needed 

 in Dougherty County. 



Not only were the planters confronted by this shrinkage 

 in the labor supply, but they were also confronted by the 

 imperative demand for labor. Without money or credit 

 they returned to their homes in 1865 in dire need of the 

 means of making their living from the soil. It has been 

 said that few members of the army which surrendered at 

 Appamatox did not toil with the plow during the next few 

 years. The land was the only form of capital, and the 

 Negro was the only supply of labor. These were the tools 

 at hand for the rebuilding of the South. 



The high price of cotton was a spur to their efforts. The 



