Years. No. of Slaves. Increase. Per ct. of Increase.
1790, 697,897
1800, 893,041 195,144 28
1810, 1,191,364 298,323 32
1820, 1,538,064 346,700 29
1830, 2,009,031 470,967 29
1840, 2,487,855 478,324 24
1850, 3,204,313 716,958 29
1860, 4,002,996 798,683 25
The average increase in every ten years during the seventy years has
been about 28 per cent.
INCREASE OF WHOLE POPULATION, INCLUDING SLAVES
AND EMIGRANTS
Years. Population. Increase. Per ct. of
Increase.
1790, 3,929,872 1,376,080
1800, 5,305,952 1,376,080 37
1810, 7,239,814 1,933,862 36
1820, 9,688,131 2,398,817 33
1830, 12,866,920 3,228,789 34
1840, 17,063,353 4,196,433 33
1850, 23,191,876 6,128,523 36
1860, 31,676,217 8,484,341 36
The average increase in every ten years would be about 35 per cent.
Deducting from this latter table the slaves, the emigrants, and children
born of emigrants, now included in it, and the ratio of increase is
below 27 per cent every ten years. So that if anything should occur to
check the tide of emigration, the blacks in this country would increase
in a faster ratio than the whites.
We can form some idea as to the danger of such a check, when we advert
to the fact that the emigration which in 1854 was 427,833, fell off in
1858 to 144,652.
To finish the picture which these figures present to us, let us carry
the mind forward a decade or two. At the average rate of increase of the
blacks, namely, 28 per cent, we shall have, of the slave population
alone, and excluding the free blacks, 5,060,585 in 1870, and 6,577,584
in 1880. And by that time they will be increasing at the rate of 150,000
to 200,000 a year.
Carl Schurz, in his speech at the Cooper Institute, in New-York, put to
his audience a pertinent inquiry: 'You ask me, What shall we do with our
negroes, who are now 4,000,000? And I ask you, What will you do with
them when they will be 8,000,000--or rather, _what will they do with
you?_ Surely, surely the question involves the greatest problem of the
age.
If our fathers had met the question seventy years ago, we should not now
behold the spectacle of 6,000,000 of our people in rebellion, and an
army of 400,000 men arrayed against the integrity of the Union. And we
may well profit by the example so far as to ask ourselves the question,
What will be the condition of our country and of our posterity, fifty
years hence, if we, too, shirk the question as painful and difficult of
solution?
Whether ultimate and universal emancipation will be one of the necessary
modes of dealing with it, time must show. In the mean time there is a
question immediately pressing upon us. Day by day our armies are
advancing among them, and every news of a contest that comes, brings us
accounts of the swarms of 'contrabands' who are flocking to us for
protection. At one place alone, Port Royal, S.C., the Government Agent
reports that there are at least fifteen thousand slaves deserted by
their masters, and thus practically emancipated. Untaught and unwonted
to take care of themselves--our armies consuming the fruits of the earth
and finding no employment for these 'National Freedmen'--the danger is
great that want, and temptation, and the absence of the government to
which they have been accustomed, may yet drive them to become lawless
hordes, preying on all.
The same state of things must of necessity exist wherever the
slave-owner flies from the approach of our armies; and we have now
presented to us the alternative of either allowing their state to be
worse by reason of their emancipation, or better, according as the wise
and the humane among us may deal with the subject.
Some measures, we learn, have already been initiated for the emergency.
'The Educational Commission' of Boston, at the head of which is Governor
Andrews; 'The Freedman's Relief Association,' in New-York, with Judge
Edmonds as its President; and a similar society in Philadelphia, of
which Stephen Colwell is Chairman, are societies of large-hearted men
and women, banded together, as they express it, to 'teach the freedmen
of the colored race civilization and Christianity; to imbue them with
notions of order, industry, economy and self-reliance, and to elevate
them in the scale of humanity, by inspiring them with self-respect.'
The task is certainly a high and holy one, and eminently necessary. How
far it will be sustained by the Government or the people, or how far the
purpose can be carried out with a race who have been intentionally kept
in profound ignorance, is part of the great problem that we are to
solve. But not all of it, by any means. There is much more for
enlightened patriotism and wise humanity yet to do, before the task
shall be accomplished and the work begun by the Revolution shall be
finished; and to prevent a conflict of races, which can end only in the
extermination of one or the other.
The 16,000,000 of natives who were once masters of this whole continent
are now dwindled into a few insignificant tribes, 'away among the
mountains.' Is such to be the fate of the negro also? Or has the spirit
of God's charity so far progressed among us that, unlike our fathers, we
can redeem rather than destroy, can emancipate rather than enslave?
Be the answer to those questions what it may, there are other
considerations, immediately affecting ourselves as a nation and a race.
Slavery would seem to retard our advancement in both respects.
During the ten years from 1850 to 1860, the total population of our
country increased about 37 per cent.
In 1790, there were seventeen States in the Union, and of those
seventeen, eight are now slave States, and the following table of those
States will show how the increase of slavery retards the advance of the
whites:
Ratio of Ratio of
Free Whites. Increase Slaves. Increase
1850. 1860. 1850. 1860.
Delaware, 71,169 110,548 56 2,290 1,805 *
Georgia, 521,572 615,336 18 381,682 467,461 23
Kentucky, 761,417 933,707 22 210,981 225,902 7
Maryland, 417,943 646,183 55 90,368 85,382 *
N. Carolina, 552,028 679,965 23 288,548 328,377 14
S. Carolina, 274,567 308,186 9 384,984 407,185 7
Tennessee, 756,753 859,528 14 239,460 287,112 20
Virginia, 894,800 1097,373 23 472,628 495,826 5
* Decrease.
From these facts, it would seem that, in the two States in which slavery
has decreased, the increase of the whites has been 55 and 56 per cent,
exceeding the average ratio of increase in the whole nation. While in
all the other States, where slavery has increased, none of them have
come up to the average national ratio of increase, and in one of them,
(South-Carolina,) the increase is not one quarter the national average.
In respect to South-Carolina, it is a remarkable fact that while she has
now nearly four tunes as many slaves as she had in 1790, her whole
population (slaves and all) is not three times what it then was, and her
free population is only a little more than twice its number in 1790. In
other words, while in seventy years her slave population has increased
four-fold, her free population has only a little more than doubled.[B]
These facts teach their own lesson; but they compel all who value the
Union and the peace of the nation, to ask how far they have had to do
with the troubles of nullification and secession, which for thirty years
have been plaguing us, and have now culminated in a terrible rebellion!
* * * * *