In the year 1600 hardly a European family could be found along the
headlands and indentations of the coast which form the southern limit of
the Slave States of America.
Since that time the countless multitudes of the red men who inhabited the
forests of these lands have disappeared, and other races from an older
world and other climes have taken their places, increasing in numbers with
as great rapidity as the other declined.
We have seen here the swarthy sons of Nubia, under the fostering care of
Slavery, or under the mysterious and unexplained influences of climate,
increase with such rapidity, that the ratio for the last decade (previous
to the war), if continued for a century, would give a black population of
more than forty millions. Strange spectacle in the movement of races!
Here we see, almost during the memory of living men, a distinct race
disappear, and a new nation of totally opposite character rise up, as if
by magic, in their vanishing footsteps. How prophetic was the speech of
the Indian chief to his tribe, when he beheld with dismay the steady
progress of the white men who lived upon the cereals! "I say, then,"
exclaimed the red man, "to every one who hears me, before the trees above
our heads shall have died of age, before the maples of the valley cease to
yield us sugar, the race of the sowers of corn will have extirpated the
race of flesh-eaters."