While slavery came under pressure in Virginia and Maryland in
the late spring and early summer of 1861, elsewhere in the South
the business of slavery went on, now seemingly secure under the
Confederate government. On July 7, 1861, the Daily True Delta in
New Orleans published an advertisement from the Southern Pacific
Railroad seeking to buy or hire slaves for railroad construction
labor. The ad read: We will purchase or hire, for a term of five
years, Nine Hundred or a Thousand Slave Laborers, to work on the
Southern Pacific Railroad, in Texas–immediately west of
Shreveport, La.–in a region secure and protected from invasion
and molestation during the conflict which does exist between the
two sections of this country. The country through which the road
passes is entirely healthy, and for the distance of 400 or 500
miles west of Shreveport, it penetrates one of the finest
agricultural countries on the continent of America. Clearly, the
railroad would not seek to purchase slaves or lease them for a
five-year