avery
publication on the internal slave trade was unable to decide with
certainty what proportion of slaves for the southern market was
furnished by each of the so-called breeding States. The author of
_Slavery and Internal Slave Trade in the United States_ estimated
that 80,000 slaves were annually exported from seven States to the
South. He gave no figures that were not his own estimates. He ranked
the seven States, however, in the order of the number of slaves which
he thought they furnished as follows: Virginia, Maryland, North
Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Delaware.[274]

Martin estimates that Kentucky sent on the average about 5,000 slaves
to the southern market.[275] Again this must be considered purely
conjectural. It is reasonable to suppose that during the last two
decades of the slavery era there were few slaves imported into
Kentucky that were intended for the purely Kentucky market. What
Negroes came into Kentucky were for the most part on their way to the
more profitable southern trade. The average death rate among the
slaves during this period was 1.9 per one hundred and the birth rate
was 3.2, or an excess of births over deaths of 1.1 per hundred. This
would make the annual natural increase among the slave population
about 2,000 per year. Comparing this with the growth of the slave
group from 1840 to 1850 we find that the increase of slaves was much
more. But it was during the next decade that the slave trade reached
its height and here we find that the slave population increased
14,502, whereas the natural increase during that period should have
been 23,190. Hence the slaves failed to reach even their natural
increase by a deficiency of 8,688. Taken literally that would mean
that during the ten-year period that number of slaves were exported
from Kentucky. But it is reasonable to suppose that many more than
that were sent to the South. With the exception of the last decade,
however, the slave population of Kentucky increased faster than the
mere natural increase of the Negroes. The law would not permit of any
importation of slaves intended for Kentucky, so the export of purely
Kentucky slaves appears never to have been prominent except during the
decade from 1850 to 1860.

The selling price of slaves naturally presents itself at this point.
In Kentucky these records are very few because the tax books in
practically all the counties of the State have been destroyed. We have
no accurate s