? Yet there
are millions among us that turn pale at the thought of emancipation,
lest thereby we should be overrun by the multiplication of the colored
race! There are millions who would be thought intelligent men, who think
they have propounded an unanswerable argument against emancipation When
they have asked, 'What will you do with the negro?' We may well ask what
shall we do with the negro, if we continue to multiply the race in
slavery as beasts of burden and articles of merchandise. But on the
supposition of freedom, the question has no significance. The men who
are always scaring themselves and others by such fears are either very
ignorant or very hypocritical.

But the case will be still stronger when we come to inquire, as we must
before we close, into the causes of the facts which have just been
presented. There is no reason to believe that the slower increase of the
colored race is at all due to any original inferiority in the powers of
reproduction, or that any such inferiority exists. Its causes are to be
found wholly in the different circumstances, characters, and habits of
the two peoples. The negro is, to a great extent, a barbarian in the
midst of civilization. He is destitute of those comforts of life, that
care, skill, and intelligent watchfulness, which are indispensable to
success in rearing children in the midst of the dangers, exposures, and
diseases of infancy. His dwelling does not afford the necessary
protection from the cold and storms of winter, or from the heats of
summer: it is ill warmed and ill ventilated; he has not an unfailing
supply of food and clothing suited to the wants of that most frail and
delicate of living creatures, a human infant. Hence a large portion of
his children die in infancy.

On the last page of the Appendix to the volume already referred to, is a
most instructive table, showing the truth of this operation. Thus in
1850 the white population of Alabama was 426,514; the colored
population, slave and free, was 365,109. In that year the deaths of
white children under five years of age were 1,650; of colored children,
2,463. That is, only two thirds as many white children died as colored;
and yet the white population was greater almost in the ratio of 7 to 6.
By running the eye down the table, it will be seen that similar facts
exist in every State where there is a large colored population. These
facts leave us in no doubt as to the reason why the increase of the
color