Says Dr. Cartwright of New Orleans:—
“Here in New Orleans, the larger part of the drudgery—work requiring exposure to the sun, as railroad-making, street-paving, dray-driving, ditching and building, is performed by white people.”
To the statistical tables which show the number of deaths in the free and in the slave States in 1850, we would direct special attention. Those persons, particularly the propogandists of negro slavery, who, heretofore, have been so dreadfully exercised on account of what they have been pleased to term “the insalubrity of Southern climes,” will there find something to allay their fearful apprehensions. A critical examination of said tables will disclose the fact that, in proportion to population, deaths occur more frequently in Massachusetts than in any Southern State except Louisiana; more frequently in New York than in any of the Southern States, except Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Texas; more frequently in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, and in Ohio, than in either Georgia, Florida, or Alabama. Leaving Wisconsin and Louisiana out of the account, and then comparing the bills of mortality in the remaining Northern States, with those in the remaining Southern States, we find the difference decidedly in favor of the latter; for, according to this calculation, while the ratio of deaths is as only one to 74.60 of the living population in the Southern States, it is as one to 72.39 in the Northern.
Says Dr. J. C. Nott, of Mobile:—
“Heat, moisture, animal and vegetable matter are said to be the elements which produce the diseases of the South, and yet the testimony in proof of the health of the banks of the lower portion of the Mississippi River, is too strong to be doubted,—not only the river itself but also the numerous bayous which meander through Louisiana. Here is a perfectly flat alluvial country, covering several hundred miles, interspersed with interminable lakes, lagunes and jungles, and still we are informed by Dr. Cartwright, one of the most acute observers of the day, that this country is exempt from miasmatic disorders, and is extremely healthy. His assertion has been confirmed to me by hundreds of witnesses, and we know from our own observation, that the population present a robust and healthy appearance.”
But the best part is yet to come. In spite of all the blatant assertions of the oligarchy, that the climate of the South was arranged expressly for the negroes, and that the negroes were created expressly to inhabit it as the healthful servitors of other men, a carefully kept register of all the deaths that occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, for the space of six years, shows that, even in that locality which is generally regarded as so unhealthy, the annual mortality was much greater among the blacks, in proportion to population, than among the whites. Dr. Nott himself shall state the facts. He says:—
“The average mortality for the last six years in Charleston for all ages is 1 in 51, including all classes. Blacks alone 1 in 44; whites alone, 1 in 58—a very remarkable result, certainly. This mortality is perhaps not an unfair test, as the population during the last six years has been undisturbed by emigration and acclimated in a greater proportion than at any former period.”
Numerous other authorities might be cited in proof of the general healthiness of the climate south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Of 127 remarkable cases of American longevity, published in a recent edition of Blake’s Biographical Dictionary, 68 deceased centenarians are credited to the Southern States, and 59 to the Northern—the list being headed with Betsey Trantham, of Tennessee—a white woman, who died in 1834, at the extraordinarily advanced age of 154 years.
TABLE NO. LVII.