enjoyment of all equality, political and social, and his becoming
homogeneous with the mass of the American people; and the fact that they
think so is the only adequate explanation of the inflexible energy of
will with which they resist all measures which are supposed to tend in
the smallest degree toward emancipation. And they think themselves able
to give unanswerable reasons for the bitterness with which they note
everything which is expressed by the word 'abolitionism.' They assume it
for a fact, which admits no contradiction, that the natural increase of
the negro race in this country is more rapid than that of the white man.
So far as my observation extends, the great majority of the people
believe this with an undoubting faith. It is constantly asserted in
conversation, and in the most exaggerated form in newspaper paragraphs;
although (as I shall presently show) a mere glance at our census tables
disproves it. It is also assumed, with a faith equally undoubting, that
if the slaves were all emancipated, the negro race would still increase
as rapidly in freedom as in slavery. Emancipation, it is said, would at
once cast upon the country four millions and a half of free negroes; and
by the rapidity of their increase, they would, at no distant day, become
a majority of the whole population.

If then, it is further argued, you emancipate them, and yet withhold
from them a full participation in all our political privileges, they
will be hostile to our government, a great nation of aliens in the midst
of us, who would be the natural enemies of our institutions. An
internecine war of races, it is said, must follow. Even here it would be
well for persons who entertain such gloomy apprehensions, to remember
that if these assumptions were all true (though I will show in the
sequel that they are not), even then, emancipation could not make of the
negroes more dangerous enemies to our institutions than slavery has made
of the masters. It is also said that the only possible mode of escaping
all these horrible results, would be to admit the negro, if he must be
freed, to all the privileges and franchises of the Constitution, and
amalgamate him entirely with the mass of American society. Thus it is
taken for proved that emancipation would carry with it the equality of
the negro and the white man in all their relations.

I believe it to be true beyond reasonable doubt, that the great majority
of the American people do at this ti