Garland wrote that “all the Negroes” went “cheerfully.” Lies. Every enslaved worker knew that going to the cotton plantations of the Deep South meant backbreaking work under a quota system enforced by violence. Moreover, Hinds County was the site of an enslaved insurrection scare and the lynching of several enslaved workers. Slaves from Virginia were especially suspect because Deep South slavers believed white Virginians sold the most rebellious Black people to Mississippi to get rid of their influence.78
