Increase Of Whole Population, Including Slaves And Emigrants.

Years	Population	Increase	Per ct. of Increase.
1790	3,929,872	1,376,080
1800	5,305,952	1,376,080	37
1810	7,239,814	1,933,862	36
1820	9,688,131	2,398,817	33
1830	12,866,920	3,228,789	34
1840	17,063,353	4,196,433	33
1850	23,191,876	6,128,523	36
1860	31,676,217	8,484,341	36

The average increase in every ten years would be about 35 per cent.

Deducting from this latter table the slaves, the emigrants, and children born of emigrants, now included in it, and the ratio of increase is below 27 per cent every ten years. So that if anything should occur to check the tide of emigration, the blacks in this country would increase in a faster ratio than the whites.

We can form some idea as to the danger of such a check, when we advert to the fact that the emigration which in 1854 was 427,833, fell off in 1858 to 144,652.

To finish the picture which these figures present to us, let us carry the mind forward a decade or two. At the average rate of increase of the blacks, namely, 28 per cent, we shall have, of the slave population alone, and excluding the free blacks, 5,060,585 in 1870, and 6,577,584 in 1880. And by that time they will be increasing at the rate of 150,000 to 200,000 a year.

Carl Schurz, in his speech at the Cooper Institute, in New-York, put to his audience a pertinent inquiry: 'You ask me, What shall we do with our negroes, who are now 4,000,000? And I ask you, What will you do with them when they will be 8,000,000—or rather, what will they do with you?

Surely, surely the question involves the greatest problem of the age.

If our fathers had met the question seventy years ago, we should not now behold the spectacle of 6,000,000 of our people in rebellion, and an army of 400,000 men arrayed against the integrity of the Union. And we may well profit by the example so far as to ask ourselves the question, What will be the condition of our country and of our posterity, fifty years hence, if we, too, shirk the question as painful and difficult of solution?

Whether ultimate and universal emancipation will be one of the necessary modes of dealing with it, time must show. In the mean time there is a question immediately pressing upon us. Day by day our armies are advancing among them, and every news of a contest that comes, brings us accounts of the swarms of 'contrabands' who are flocking to us for protection. At one place alone, Port Royal, S.C., the Government Agent reports that there are at least fifteen thousand slaves deserted by their masters, and thus practically emancipated. Untaught and unwonted to take care of themselves—our armies consuming the fruits of the earth and finding no employment for these 'National Freedmen'—the danger is great that want, and temptation, and the absence of the government to which they have been accustomed, may yet drive them to become lawless hordes, preying on all.

The same state of things must of necessity exist wherever the slave-owner flies from the approach of our armies; and we have now presented to us the alternative of either allowing their state to be worse by reason of their emancipation, or better, according as the wise and the humane among us may deal with the subject.

Some measures, we learn, have already been initiated for the emergency. 'The Educational Commission' of Boston, at the head of which is Governor Andrews; 'The Freedman's Relief Association,' in New-York, with Judge Edmonds as its President; and a similar society in Philadelphia, of which Stephen Colwell is Chairman, are societies of large-hearted men and women, banded together, as they express it, to 'teach the freedmen of the colored race civilization and Christianity; to imbue them with notions of order, industry, economy and self-reliance, and to elevate them in the scale of humanity, by inspiring them with self-respect.'

The task is certainly a high and holy one, and eminently necessary. How far it will be sustained by the Government or the people, or how far the purpose can be carried out with a race who have been intentionally kept in profound ignorance, is part of the great problem that we are to solve. But not all of it, by any means. There is much more for enlightened patriotism and wise humanity yet to do, before the task shall be accomplished and the work begun by the Revolution shall be finished; and to prevent a conflict of races, which can end only in the extermination of one or the other.

The 16,000,000 of natives who were once masters of this whole continent 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:

	Free Whites.		Ratio of Increase.	Slaves.		Ratio of Increase.
	1850.	1860.	Ratio of Increase.	1850.	1860.	Ratio of Increase.
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.[2]

These facts teach their own lesson; but they compel all who value the Union and the peace of the nation, to ask how far they have had to do with the troubles of nullification and secession, which for thirty years have been plaguing us, and have now culminated in a terrible rebellion!