The table given below shows the increase for the sixty years, 1790 to 1850, without reference to intervening periods:
| Number. | 1790. | 1850. | Absolute Increase. | Incr. per cent. |
| Whites | 3,172,364 | 19,631,799 | 16,459,335 | 527.97 |
| Free col. | 59,466 | 428,637 | 369,171 | 617.44 |
| Slaves | 697,897 | 3,198,324 | 2,500,427 | 350.13 |
| Total free col. and slaves | 757,363 | 3,626,961 | 2,869,598 | 377.00 |
| Total pop. | 3,929,827 | 23,258,760 | 19,328,883 | 491.52 |
Sixty years since, the proportion between the whites and blacks, bond and free, was 4.2 to one. In 1850, it was 5.26 to 1, and the ratio in favor of the former race is increasing. Had the blacks increased as fast as the whites during these sixty years, their number, on the first of June, would have been 4,657,239; so that, in comparison with the whites, they have lost, in this period, 1,035,340.
This disparity is much more than accounted for by European emigration to the United States. Dr. Chickering, in an essay upon emigration, published at Boston in 1848—distinguished for great elaborateness of research—estimates the gain of the white population, from this source, at 3,922,152. No reliable record was kept of the number of immigrants into the United States until 1820, when, by the law of March, 1819, the collectors were required to make quarterly returns of foreign passengers arriving in their districts. For the first ten years, the returns under the law afford materials for only an approximation to a true state of the facts involved in this inquiry.
Dr. Chickering assumes, as a result of his investigations, that of the 6,431,088 inhabitants of the United States in 1820, 1,430,906 were foreigners, arriving subsequent to 1790, or the descendants of such. According to Dr. Seybert, an earlier writer upon statistics, the number of foreign passengers, from 1790 to 1810, was, as nearly as could be ascertained, 120,000; and from the estimates of Dr. Seybert, and other evidence, Hon. George Tucker, author of a valuable work on the census of 1840, supposes the number, from 1810 to 1820, to have been 114,000. These estimates make, for the thirty years preceding 1820, 234,000.
If we reckon the increase of these emigrants at the average rate of the whole body of white population during these three decades, they and their descendants in 1820, would amount to about 360,000. From 1820 to 1830 there arrived, according to the returns of the Custom-houses, 135,986 foreign passengers, and from 1830 to 1840, 579,370, making for the twenty years 715,356. During this period a large number of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, came into the United States through Canada. These were estimated at 67,903 from 1820 to 1830, and from 1830 to 1840, at 199,130. From 1840 to 1850 the arrivals of foreign passengers amounted to 1,542,850, equal to an annual average of 154,285.
From the above returns and estimates the following statement has been made up, to show the accessions to our population from immigration, from 1790 to 1850—a period of sixty years:
Number of foreigners arriving from 1790 to 1810: 120,000
Natural increase, reckoned in periods of ten years: 47,560
Number of foreigners arriving from 1810 to 1820: 114,000