8.28
Free 88.2 72.2 25.25 36.85 20.9 10.9
col.
Slaves 27.9 33.4 29.1 30.61 23.8 28.58
Total 32.2 37.6 28.58 31.44 23.4 26.22
col.
Total 35.01 36.45 33.12 33.48 32.6 36.25
pop.

The census had been taken previously to 1830 on the 1st of August; the
enumeration began that year on the 1st of June, two months earlier, so
that the interval between the fourth and fifth censuses was two months
less than ten years, which time allowed for would bring the total increase
up to the rate of 34.36 per cent.

The table given below shows the increase for the sixty years, 1790 to
1850, without reference to intervening periods:

Number. 1790. 1850. Absolute Incr. per
Increase. cent.
Whites 3,172,364 19,631,799 16,459,335 527.97
Free col. 59,466 428,637 369,171 617.44
Slaves 697,897 3,198,324 2,500,427 350.13
Total free 757,363 3,626,961 2,869,598 377.00
col. and
slaves
Total pop. 3,929,827 23,258,760 19,328,883 491.52

Sixty years since, the proportion between the whites and blacks, bond and
free, was 4.2 to one. In 1850, it was 5.26 to 1, and the ratio in favor of
the former race is increasing. Had the blacks increased as fast as the
whites during these sixty years, their number, on the first of June, would
have been 4,657,239; so that, in comparison with the whites, they have
lost, in this period, 1,035,340.

This disparity is much more than accounted for by European emigration to
the United States. Dr. Chickering, in an essay upon emigration, published
at Boston in 1848--distinguished for great elaborateness of
research--estimates the gain of the white population, from this source, at
3,922,152. No reliable record was kept of the number of immigrants into
the United States until 1820, when, by the law of March, 1819, the
collectors were required to make quarterly returns of foreign passengers
arriving in their districts. For the first ten years, the returns under
the law afford materials for only an approximation to a true state of the
facts involved in this inquiry.

Dr. Chickering assumes, as a result of his investigations, that of the
6,431,088 inhabitants of the United States in 1820, 1,430,906 were
foreigners, arriving subsequent to 1790, or the de