The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863

I might, I say, leave my argument here; but to do so would be great injustice to the subject. There are abundant and unquestionable facts, which show to a demonstration, that the case of the negro in his relations to the European population of this country is embraced in the law just stated.

In the first place, the two races are not amalgamated. Intermarriages between them are so rare, that few of the readers of this article can remember ever to have known one. Such marriages are regarded as monstrous and disgraceful, though the law should, as in some of the States, recognize them. One sentiment in respect to them pervades the whole community, and that a sentiment of aversion. Those half-breeds which spring from licentiousness, or even from the very few lawful marriages which have occurred, are not accepted as standing in any nearer relations to the white man than the pure-blooded African. In those States where slavery has been longest extinct, and the colored man has been relieved from all legal disabilities, the line between the two races is as sharply drawn to-day as it was two hundred years ago. On such a question two hundred years and more is long enough for an experiment. The experiment already tried does prove that the Anglo-American and African populations of this country cannot be amalgamated, either by freedom or slavery; and those who pretend to fear it, are either trying to deceive others for selfish and criminal purposes, or else they are wofully deceived themselves.

Nor are the apprehensions of those who dread the rapid increase of the negro, at all sustained by facts. That fear of a coming internecine war of races, in case the colored man is emancipated, which haunts some minds, has no foundation except in ignorance of the real facts. In no portion of our history has our colored population ever increased with a rapidity nearly so great as the white population. From 1790 to 1860 the colored population increased in the ratio of 1 to 5.86; and the white population in the ratio of 1 to 8.50. If we compare them for any shorter period, we shall always find that the white population increased the more rapidly of the two. From 1790 to 1808, we might perhaps expect to find it otherwise; for during that period the slave trade was in full activity, and tens of thousands of Africans were imported as articles of merchandise. But from 1790 to 1810, while the colored population increased in the ratio of 1 to 1.81, the white population increased in the ratio of 1 to 1.84, although during that period the white population of the country was very little increased by immigration. How it has happened that this point, which our tables of population make so entirely plain, has been so much misapprehended, and why the prevailing notions respecting it are so erroneous, is not easy to explain. The above estimate also reckons all half breeds as belonging to the colored population. (See De Bow's 'Compendium of the United States Census of 1850,' Tables 18, 42, and 71.)

But this is not all. A careful examination of Tables 42 and 71 of the volume above referred to, will show that the increase of the colored race in freedom is certainly not half so great as in slavery. Indeed there is great reason to doubt whether our colored population has ever increased at all, except in slavery. From 1790 to 1800 the free colored population almost doubled, evidently by the emancipation of slaves; for during that period the slave population of Connecticut, Delaware, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont was greatly diminished, while that of New Jersey and Maryland was very little increased. In the last mentioned the increase of her slave population was only 2½ per cent. in ten years, while the increase of her free colored population was 143½ per cent. in the same period. These figures leave no room for doubt that the rapid increase of the free colored population in all that decade was caused by the fact that the great mass of the people were honestly opposed to slavery, and therefore the work of emancipation went on with rapidity.

From 1800 to 1810 the increase of the free colored population was 72 per cent., under the continued though somewhat slackened operation of the same cause. From 1810 to 1820 the increase had declined from 72 to 25 per cent.; for the very obvious reason that most of the Northern States had now no slaves to emancipate, while the Southern States were holding to the system of slavery with increased tenacity, and emancipation was becoming less frequent. From 1820 to 1830 the ratio of increase was again raised to 37 per cent. in ten years. By referring again to Table 71, it will be seen that in that decade, New York and New Jersey emancipated more than 15,000 slaves, adding them to the free colored population. From 1830 to 1840 the rate of increase declined to 21 per cent., and from 1840 to 1850 to only 12¼ per cent., and to 10 per cent. from 1850 to 1860.

These figures prove that from 1790 to 1840 the increase of the free colored population depended chiefly on the emancipation of slaves, and leave no reason to believe that its own natural increase ever exceeded 12¼ per cent. in ten years; while the average increase of the slave population is nearly 28 per cent. in ten years, and of the white population 34 per cent. in ten years. Thus, beyond controversy, the reproductive power of the colored population, always greatly inferior to that of the white population, is yet not half so great in freedom as in slavery. This difference is to be accounted for in great measure by the wicked and beastly stimulus applied to the increase of slaves, that the chattel market may be kept supplied.

There is no reason to suppose that the increase of the free colored population would be in a greater ratio if all were emancipated; but, as will appear from considerations yet to be presented, much for supposing that it would be in a much smaller ratio. How then would the case stand on that supposition? In 1860 there were about 27,000,000 of our white population, increasing at the rate of 34 per cent. in ten years; and less than 4,500,000 of colored population, increasing (on the supposition of universal freedom) in a ratio not exceeding 12¼ per cent. in ten years. Surely, that must be a very timid man who, in this relation of the parties, fears anything from the increase of free negroes. A war between these two races, so related to each other, is simply absurd, and the fear of it childish and cowardly. Slavery may multiply the colored population till its numbers shall become alarming; but if we will give freedom to the black man, we have nothing to fear from his increase.

But this certainly is not the full strength of the case. There is no good reason to believe that the natural increase of the free colored population is even 12¼ per cent. in ten years, but much for suspecting that even this apparent increase is the result of emancipation, either by the slave's own act, or by the consent of the master. If we take our departure from Chicago, make the tour of the lakes to the point where the boundary line of New York and Pennsylvania intersects the shore of Lake Erie, thence pass along the southern boundary of New York, till it intersects the Hudson river, thence along that river and the Atlantic coast to the southern boundary of Virginia, thence along the southern boundaries of Virginia and Kentucky to the Mississippi, thence along that river to the point where the northern boundary of Illinois intersects it, and thence along that boundary and the shore of Lake Michigan to the place of departure, we shall have embraced within the line described ten of the thirty-four States of the Union. By an examination of Table 42, already referred to, it will be seen that outside of those ten States the free colored population not only did not increase between 1840 and 1850, but actually diminished, and that all the increase of that decade was in those ten States.

Why then was there an increase in those ten States, while in the other twenty-four there was an actual decrease? I think this question can only be answered by ascribing that increase to emancipation. In Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, slavery is unprofitable and declining, and acts of emancipation frequently occur. Pennsylvania and New Jersey, before the passage of the fugitive slave law of 1850, were favorite resorts of fugitives, perhaps partly on account of the known sympathies of the Quakers. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, were also resorted to by fugitives, both on account of their easy accessibility from adjacent Slave States, and their proximity to Canada, and also because such labor as a fugitive from slavery is best able to do, is there always in demand. These States have also received thousands of colored persons, brought to them by humane and conscientious masters, for the very purpose of emancipating them.

From 1850 to 1860 the facts are still more striking. The increase which occurred was not, as would have been true of a natural increase, scattered over our whole territory, and in some proportion to the colored population previously existing, but almost wholly, either where the unprofitableness and decline of slavery was leading to emancipation, or where from any cause the fugitive slave law of 1850 was not strictly enforced. Examples of the former are Maryland, Virginia, and Missouri, and of the latter are Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and even Massachusetts and Connecticut, in the latter of which it had been declining for twenty years previous.

With the facts before us, then, furnished by the United States Census, from 1790 to 1860, how is it possible to believe that the colored population of this country has ever increased at all, except hi slavery? How can we help seeing that it is slavery, and slavery alone, which has swelled their numbers from a little more than half a million, as it was in 1790, to near four and a half millions at the present time? 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 colored population is always slower than that of the white population.

This occurs, as the table just referred to shows, under slavery, where the pecuniary interest of the master will secure his watchful coöperation with the parent to preserve the life of the infant. But in freedom the same causes act upon the colored race with vastly more destructive effect. The preservation of infant life and health is then left solely to the care, skill, and resources of the parent. The result is that decay of the colored race which we have seen indicated in the census. It is essential to our purpose that this point should be made quite plain.

It is obvious that there is in every community a lower stratum of population, in which wages are sufficient to support the individual laborer in comfort, but not sufficient for the support of a family. This not only always has been so, but it always must be, as long as competition continues to be the test of value; and competition must continue to be the test of value as long as the individual right of property is protected and preserved. Nor is this, as many superficial thinkers of our day have thought it, merely the hard and selfish rule by which Shylock oppresses and grinds the face of his victim: it is a necessary and beneficent law of the best forms of society which can ever exist in this world. The welfare of society in all the future imperatively requires that it should be propagated from the strong, the sound, the healthy, both in body and mind, from the strongest, most vigorous, and noblest specimens of the race; and not from the diseased, the weak, the vicious, the degraded, the broken-down classes. Thus only can the life and health of society be preserved age after age. This is as necessary as it is that the farmer should propagate his domestic animals from the finest of his stock, and not from the diminutive, the weak, and the sickly. And it is accomplished in well ordered society by that very law of wages just stated. As a general rule, it is the very persons who are unfit to be the parents of the coming generation, that are thrown into that lower stratum where wages are insufficient for the support of a family. And just in proportion as the entire structure of society is pervaded by intelligence and virtue, this class of persons will abstain from marriage, by prudently considering that they have not a satisfactory prospect of being able to support a family. It is thus only that the horrors of extreme poverty can be avoided at the bottom of the social pyramid. The severity of this law of wages and population can thus be greatly mitigated and the comforts of life be universally enjoyed; but the law itself is necessary and beneficent, and never can be repealed till human nature and human society are constructed on other principles than those known to us.

To apply this to the question before us: When by the act of emancipation the negro is made a free laborer, he is brought into direct competition with the white man; that competition he is unable to endure; and he soon finds his place in that lower stratum, which has just been spoken of, where he can support himself in tolerable comfort as a hired servant, but cannot support a family. The consequence is inevitable. He will either never marry, or he will, in the attempt to support a family, struggle in vain against the laws of nature, and his children will, many of them at least, die in infancy. It is not necessary to argue to convince a candid man (and for candid men only is this article written) that this is, as a general rule, the condition of the free negro. And it shows, beyond the possibility of mistake, what in this country his destiny must be. Like his brother, the Indian of the forest, he must melt away and disappear forever from the midst of us. I do not affirm or intimate that this must be his destiny in all countries. In the tropical regions of the earth, where he may have little to fear from the competition of the more civilized white man, he may preserve and multiply his race. Let him try the experiment. It is worth trying.

Far be it from me to intimate that the negro is the only class of our population that are in this sad condition. In our large cities and towns there are hundreds of thousands of men who have no drop of African blood in their veins, and who are more clamorous than any other class against negro equality, who, through ignorance or vice, or superstition, or inevitable calamity, are in the same hard lot; their children, if they have any, perish in great numbers in infancy, and they will add nothing to the future population of our country. That will be derived from a stronger, nobler parentage. Their race will become extinct. Their case differs from that of the colored man only in this, that they are not distinguished by color and features from the rest of the population; so that the decay of their race cannot be traced by the eye and the memory, and expressed in statistical tables.

We are now prepared to see why the colored population has been, for a considerable time, declining in New York and New England. In those States population is dense; all occupations which afford a comfortable living for a family are crowded and the competition of the white man is quite too much for the negro. If emancipation were now to be made universal, the same thing would rapidly occur in all parts of our country. The white laborer would rush in and speedily crowd every avenue to prosperity and wealth; and the negro, with his inferior civilization, would be crowded everywhere into the lower stratum of the social pyramid, and in a few generations be seen no more. The far more rapid increase of the white race would render the competition more and more severe to him with each successive generation, and render his decay more rapid, and his extinction more certain.

I am well aware that this article may fall into the hands of many excellent men who will not relish this argument, nor this conclusion. They will say it were better then to keep the poor negro in slavery. But they would not say so if they would consider the whole case. If slavery were a blessing to the black man, it is so great a curse to the white man that it should never be permitted to exist. The white man can afford to be kind to the negro in freedom; but he cannot afford to curse himself with being his master and owning him as his property. On this point I need not enlarge, for I am devoutly thankful that the literature of Christendom is full of it.

But slavery is not a blessing to the negro, even in the view of his condition which I have presented; it is an unmitigated curse. To a man of governed passions and virtuous life, it is infinitely better to be an unmarried freeman, enjoying the comforts of this life, and the hopes of the life to come, than to live and die a slave, and the parent of an interminable posterity of slaves. To a being of vicious life and ungoverned passions, all life is a curse, whether in slavery or freedom; and it surely is not obligatory on us, or beneficial to the colored man, to preserve the system of slavery for the sake of perpetuating a succession of such lives down through coming generations.

Slavery, by forced and artificial means, propagates society from its lowest and most degraded class, from a race of barbarians held within its bosom from generation to generation, without being permitted to share its civilizing influences. It thus propagates barbarism from age to age, till at last it involves both master and slave in a common ruin. Freedom recruits the ranks of a nation's population from the homes of the industrious, the frugal, the strong, the enlightened, the virtuous, the religious; and leaves the ignorant, the superstitious, the indolent, the improvident, the vicious, without an offspring, and without a name in future generations. Freedom places society, by obeying the law of propagation which God imposed on it, upon an ascending plane of ever-increasing civilization; slavery, by a forced and unnatural law of propagation, places it upon a descending plane of ever-deepening vice and barbarism.

That dread of negro equality which is perpetually haunting the imaginations of the American people, is, therefore, wholly without foundation in any reality. It is a delusion, which has already driven us, in a sort of madness, far on the road to ruin. It is, I fear, a judicial blindness, which the all-wise and righteous Ruler of the universe has sent upon us for the punishment of our sins. The negro does not aspire to political or social equality with the white man. He has evidently no such destiny, no such hope, no such possibility. He is weak, and constantly becoming weaker; and nothing can ever make him strong but our continued injustice and oppression. He appeals not to our fears, but to our compassion. He asks not to rule us: he only craves of us leave to toil; to hew our wood and draw our water, for such miserable pittance of compensation as the competition of free labor will award him—a grave. If we deny him this humble boon, we may expect no end to our national convulsions but in dissolution. If we promptly grant it, over all our national domain, we may expect the speedy return of peace, and such prosperity as no nation ever before enjoyed.