If the foregoing considerations afford any illustration of the reasons why Slavery did not continue to exist in the States north of Maryland, a brief examination of statistics, to say nothing of other things, will show that the system can not continue much longer to exist in Maryland. I ask attention to the remarkable facts exhibited by the census records of our State since 1790.[2]
In nine counties in Maryland the white population has diminished since 1790. These are the counties: Montgomery, Prince George, St. Mary’s, Calvert, Charles, Kent, Caroline, Talbot and Queen Anne’s. The aggregate white population of those counties in 1790 was 73,352; in 1840 it was 54,408. Here is a falling off of nearly 20,000; if the account were carried to the present year the falling off would be more than 20,000.
These nine counties include the chief slaveholding sections of the State. In five of them taken together, viz., Montgomery, Prince George, St. Mary’s, Calvert, and Charles, the number of slaves exceeds that of the white population. These are chiefly the tobacco growing counties, together with the county of Frederick.
The counties of Allegany, Washington, Frederick and Baltimore and Baltimore City are the portions of the State in which Slavery has existed but partially. That is to say, Allegany, with an aggregate population of 15,704, has but 811 slaves; Washington, in a population of 28,862, has 2,505 slaves; Frederick has 6,370 slaves to a population of 36,703; Baltimore county, 6,533 slaves in an aggregate population of 80,256; and Baltimore city includes but 3,212 slaves in its population of 102,513.
Now taking these four counties and Baltimore city out of the account, it will be found that the aggregate white population of the rest of the State has diminished since 1790. In other words the increase of our population, which is about one hundred and fifty thousand since the first census, has been mainly in those counties where Slavery has been least prominent. In those portions of the State where Slavery prevails most prominently the white population, during the last fifty years, has diminished.
Another remarkable result exhibited by the census statistics of Maryland since 1790, is the increase of the free colored population, in contrast with the diminution of slaves. The slave population of our State amounted in 1790 to 103,036; in 1810 it reached 111,502, its maximum. Since 1810 it has fallen to 89,619. The free colored population on the other hand, which in 1790 was only 8,043, has increased to 61,093. In a few years it must exceed the slave population, for the one is increasing while the other decreases—a double process which must soon annihilate the difference of some twenty-five thousand.
The number of manumissions reported to the commissioners of the State Colonization Fund from 1831 to 1845, under the act of the former year, was 2,988. This shows an average of some two hundred and more annually. I am not sure that this number exhibits all the manumissions. It is enough, however, to show the tendency of things. With all the restrictions which legislation has imposed upon manumissions they still go on. It may be taken for certain that they will go on; that nothing can stop them. Year after year the scruples of slaveholders in some parts of the State prompt to manumission. The death beds of many afford the occasions for giving these scruples force. It is useless to reason about a thing of this sort. Emancipation in Maryland must go on. In my humble judgment it is going on too fast—and for the simple reason that we are not making adequate preparation for the new condition of things which must ensue.
The contrast presented by the progress of the free States, within fifty years, and by that of the slaveholding States for the same period, is so familiar that it would be useless to burden these pages with statistics to illustrate it. It may be sufficient to state, in respect to the increase of population, that in 1790 the free States, including Massachusetts and Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had a population of 1,971,455; while the slaveholding States, Delaware, Maryland, with the District, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, contained 1,852,494 inhabitants. In 1840 the same free States numbered a population of 6,761,082, and the same slaveholding States had an entire population of 3,827,110. The former increased in a ratio more than double as compared with the latter.
In our own State, however, where we do not grow cotton, sugar, or rice, and where there are no new lands to present a fresh soil to the plough, and to invite settlers from a distance, the increase of population in our chief slaveholding counties has been nothing at all. There has been a decrease, and a very marked one. How has this decrease happened but by a process similar to that which rendered desolate three hundred thousand acres in the champagne of Naples, in the days of Slavery among the Romans—which made Italy itself almost one wilderness, reinhabited by wild boars and other animals, before a single barbarian had crossed the Alps!
Let us not conceal the truth from ourselves. Slavery in Maryland is no longer compatible with progress; it is a dead weight and worse; it has become a wasting disease, weakening the vital powers—a leprous distilment into the life blood of the commonwealth. Yet we will have no quacks to prescribe for our malady. It is only necessary that we should become aware of our true condition; there are restorative energies in abundance, rightly directed, to retrieve the State from every disorder to which she is subject.