In a speech before the Southern Convention at Savannah in 1856, Mr. Scott, of Virginia, made the statement that not more than half the lands in the sugar and cotton-growing States had been reduced to cultivation, and that all the valuable slaves in Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri would be required to develop them.[165] But at this time the prosperity of the latter militated against the transfer of labor to the cotton-growing States. Probably the conditions in the border States is best described by quoting from a writer in "De Bow's Review" in 1857: "The difficulty," he says, "of procuring slaves at reasonable rates, has already been severely felt by the cotton planters, and this difficulty is constantly increasing. The production of rice, tobacco, wheat, Indian corn, etc., with stock raising, in those States affords nearly as profitable employment for slave labor as cotton planting in other States. They have not, as is generally supposed, a redundancy of slave labor, nor are they likely to have so long as their present prosperity continues. "The recent full development of the rich agricultural and mineral resources of these States, indeed, by an immense demand for their staple productions, have not only given profitable employment to slave labor, but has improved the pecuniary condition of the slave owner and placed him above the necessity of parting with his slave property."[166] Even Olmsted, inadvertently, no doubt, gives evidence of the prosperity of Virginia, a little before this time, when he says that in the tobacco factories of Richmond and Petersburg slaves were in great demand and received a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars and expenses a year.[167] In North Carolina, also, good hands would bring about the same wages.[168] Though the labor market in the border States was greater than the natural increase of the negro, yet it was hardly to be compared to the Southern demand. As a consequence, when debt, or necessity, or other reason, compelled the sale of slaves, they were often bought by traders and exported.[169] The statement was made by Mr. Jones, of Georgia, in the Savannah Convention, 1856, that negroes were even then worth from $1,000 to $1,500 each, and that there were ten purchasers to one seller.[170] Indeed, so great was the demand for slaves at this time that the advisability of reopening the African slave trade became one of the principal topics of discussion in Southern Agricultural and Commercial Conventions.[171] In fact, the Vicksburg Convention, 1859, passed a resolution in favor of reopening the African trade.[172]