Due to the rising demand for the labor of the enslaved in the new Cotton Kingdomapproximately one million people were relocated from older slave states Deep South between 1800 and 1860

Between 1820 and 1860, more than a million enslaved people were transferred from the upper to the lower South, the vast majority of them by slave traders in the guise of venture capitalist investors whom slaves called "soul conductors". The first wave was dedicated to clearing and clearing the region for cultivation. "Whole forests were cut down and uprooted," recalled former slave John Parker in His promised land. Those who came later planted the cotton fields which would henceforth have to care for, collect, pack and ship: "from sunrise to sunset", every day, until the end of their days.