The number of slaves currently estimated to have been transported to the South and Southwest during 1835 and 1836 almost staggers belief. The "Maryville (Tenn.) Intelligencer" made the statement in 1836 that in 1835 60,000 slaves passed through a Western town on their way to the Southern market.[150] Also, in 1836, the "Virginia (Wheeling) Times" says, intelligent men estimated the number of slaves exported from Virginia during the preceding twelve months as 120,000 of whom about two-thirds were carried there by their masters, leaving 40,000 to have been sold.[151] The "Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine," July 1837, gives the "Natchez Courier" as authority for the estimate that during 1836, 250,000 slaves were transported to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas from the older slave States.[152] A committee, in 1837, appointed by the citizens of Mobile to enquire into the cause of the prevalent financial stringency stated in their report that for the preceding four years Alabama had annually purchased from other States $10,000,000 worth of slave property.[153] When the panic of 1837 came upon Mississippi, it was thought, it seems, to have been caused through the amount of money sent out of the State in the purchase of slaves, and Governor Lynch, upon the petition of the people, convened the legislature in extra session, and in his message to it says: "The question which presents itself and which I submit for your deliberation [is]--whether the passage of an act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into this State as merchandise may not have a salutary effect in checking the drain of capital annually made upon us by the sale of this description of property."[154]