By the census of 1850, the population of the 33 States, which constituted the Union, summed up 22,969,603 persons, divided as follows: In the 19 Free States 13,230,231 whites; 213,346 free persons of color; 2,536 slaves. In the 14 Slave States there were: 6,113,068 whites; 210,085 free persons of color; 3,200,590 slaves. That meant that the South had invested in that species of property interest $1,280,200,000. By money values and population, at that time, that was an immense sum.
The Democratic Review, in this same year, published an article which was republished in the Charleston Mercury, and commended by that paper. This article sets forth certain distinct claims of considerable interest:
First that:
“The face of affairs is entirely changed since General Pinckney, in convention assented to the proposition giving Congress the right to pass laws, regulating commerce by a simple majority, on the ground that it was a boon granted the North in consideration of the necessity which the weak South had for the strong North as a neighbor. The cotton trade then scarcely existed, but the material has since been spun into a web which binds the commercial world to Southern interests.”[70]
Figures were also introduced to show that the multiplication of free blacks in the Slave States was increasing upon the proportion of slaves and that it was observable that they did not emigrate from the Slave States, where it was claimed they must in time supplant the slaves as servants; and the laws of Ohio were pointed to as indicating an opposition, not to slavery, but to the presence of the Negro, which it claimed, had greatly retarded emancipation. In these claims truth was mingled with error.
As to the indisposition of the people of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, to admit any class of colored persons to enter as residents, there can be no doubt up to this date, although indications of a change of sentiment were appearing. The repeal of the Black Laws of Ohio was one illustration. With 1,955,059 whites to only 25,279 colored persons, the harsh provisions, which closed the mouths of these unfortunates when contending with the whites, in so called courts of justice, it was conceded by the whites of Ohio, could be safely done away with, and they had been repealed in 1848. It may also have been true that the free blacks did not emigrate from the Slave States; but that in that region they were gaining upon the slaves, and that there was any reasonable possibility of their supplanting them as servants, does hot seem to be borne out by examination of the census.
The Democratic Review claims that, while in 1800 there were in the Slave States 61,441 free persons of color to 73,100 in the Free States, that by 1830 the proportions were 182,070 in the Slave States to 137,525 in the Free States, a proportion raised by 1840 to 215,568 to 172,509. But this seems inexact. By the census of 1800 there were in the Slave States 52,188 free persons of color, to 55,464 in the Free States, and by 1830 the number in the Slave States had, it is true, surpassed the number in the Free States, such being respectively 160,063 to 153,384. But whether it was in consequence of the Nat Turner insurrection of 1831, or the Abolition ebullition of 1835, by 1840 there was a change in progress, the proportion being in that year 190,285 in the Slave States to 187,647 in the Free States, which, as has before been shown, by 1850 had changed to 210,085 in the Slave States to 213,346 in the Free States.
At the same time it could be noted that while the Negroes in the United States had increased by more than 28 per cent since 1840, the freedmen had increased by less than 13 per cent in the same time.
In the Free States of New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut the free colored population had decreased by 1,402. In the Slave States of Louisiana and Mississippi it had decreased by 8,174, and that State in the South which held more than one-fourth of the whole number in the Southern States, Virginia, had appropriated $30,000 a year for their removal.[71]
The South was apparently, therefore, committed to the institution of African Slavery, and in defense of it some of its champions were wild enough to waive the question of the inferiority of the Negro race and contend, “that slavery, whether of black or white, is a normal, proper institution in society.”[72]