A year later President Jennings stated that the migration was continuing and that during the summer of 1709 "many entire families" had moved out of the colony.[8-24] In fact, although but few indentured servants arrived from England after the first decade of the century, poor whites were still departing for the north or for western Carolina so late as 1730. William Byrd II tells us that in 1728, when he was running the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina, he was entertained by a man who "was lately removed, Bag and Baggage from Maryland, thro a strong Antipathy he had to work and paying his Debts." Indeed he thought it a "thorough Aversion to Labor" which made "People file off to North Carolina."[8-25]
It is impossible to estimate the numbers involved in this movement, but they must have run into the thousands. For a full half century a large proportion of the white immigrants to Virginia seem to have remained there for a comparatively short time only, then to pass on to other settlements. And the migration to Virginia during these years we know to have comprised not less than thirty or thirty-five thousand persons. In fact, it would seem that this movement out of the older colony must have been a very important factor in the peopling of its neighbors, not only western Carolina and western Maryland, but Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Though many thus fled before the stream of negroes which poured in from Africa, others remained behind to fight for their little plantations. Yet they waged a losing battle. Those who found it possible to purchase slaves, even one or two, could ride upon the black tide, but the others slowly sank beneath it.
During the first half of the Eighteenth century the poor whites sought to offset the cheapness of slave made tobacco by producing themselves only the highest grades. The traders who dealt in the finest Orinoco, which brought the best prices, found it not upon the plantations of the wealthy, but of those who tended their plants with their own hands. "I must beg you to remember that the common people make the best," wrote Governor Gooch to the Lords of Trade in 1731.[8-26]
In fact, the wealthy planter, with his newly acquired gangs of slaves, found it difficult at this time to produce any save the lower grades of tobacco. The African was yet too savage, too untutored in the ways of civilization to be utilized for anything like intensive cultivation. "Though they may plant more in quantity," wrote Gooch, "yet it frequently proves very mean stuff, different from the Tobacco produced from well improved and well tended Grounds." "Yet the rich Man's trash will always damp the Market," he adds, "and spoil the poor Man's good Tobacco which has been carefully managed."[8-27] Thus the small farmer made one last desperate effort to save himself by pitting his superior intelligence against the cheapness of slave labor.