tinent
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 le