When, besides going into Virginia, Union armies commenced forward movements into Kentucky and Tennessee, into Missouri and Arkansas, it was deemed expedient to run off a large number of the slaves of those States into Texas, the better to secure them from capture by the Union armies, and have them where they could be shipped to foreign ports, if not thereafter needed by the States of the Confederacy, or if, peradventure, the Confederacy itself might fail of success. When, on the 16th of November, 1864, Sherman commenced his march "from Atlanta to the sea," a like necessity of getting slaves beyond the reach of Union soldiers existed in all the Gulf States, and so far as it was possible to get them into Texas it was done. How many thousands, yea, how many hundreds of thousands were thus driven into Texas from other Confederate States, God only knows, or will ever know! This particular route was made necessary because of the blockading of Southern ports; and because once in Texas, they could be held there until the result of the war was known. It was not, as before stated, the policy of the Confederate Government to have the slaves taken beyond their control, as the corner-stone of the Confederacy was to be slavery, and the more they could have of it the greater, they thought, would be their prosperity; nor was it the policy of the slave-dealer to take his chattel beyond the reach of the best market in the world, so long as there was a reasonable prospect of that market being kept open. In Texas the dealer had the double chance--either to return with his human chattels to the Confederate States, in case it became an established government, or, if that failed, then to ship them from Brazos San Diego, from Brownsville, from Corpus Christi, from Powder Horn, or from any other port that might not be blockaded, to Cuba, to Brazil, or wherever else slavery existed and a market could be found. These slave-dealers watched the result of the contest between the North and the South with the same interest that stock-jobbers and gold-gamblers watched the rise and fall of stocks, and the rise and fall of gold, when they had a large quantity of either on hand, and were waiting to turn their speculation to the best possible account. When news would reach them that the Union armies were carrying everything before them, off would go one or more cargoes of negroes to Cuba or Brazil. When, by the next mail probably, news would reach them that the Confederate armies were meeting with great successes, making it probable that a Southern Confederacy would be established, they would regret that they had sent any away, and hold the firmer to those they had left. The price at which slaves could be sold--especially at forced or hurried sales--in the Brazil and Cuban markets, was far less than what they could reasonably hope to obtain in the Southern Confederacy, _provided_ it became an acknowledged government.