Baton-Rouge gazette. [volume] (Baton-Rouge, La.) 1819-1856, 1844-05-18
From the National Lnte1tigencer.)
"ANNEXATION," SrATISTICAELY
CONSIDERED.

We should be glad to have some one ex.
plain to us how large amount ofaour wealth
and population is to be transferred to Texas,
without something like an equivalent loss to
those older regions of the country from which
these resources have been drawn. We have
all heard of that bird that ]pierces its own
breast to feed its young but it never before
| occurred to us that the mother pelican must
not grow somewhat emanciated, if her brood
is to be fattened in that way alone. Expert
ments have been attempted, too, in re-invigor-
ating the bodies of old people, by tra0sfnslng
into them the fresh and healthy vital fluid Of
the young--a process soon found, we believe,
! to be no help to either party. Here, however,
is A still wilder proposition-to transfuse from
| the only halE6iled veins of the old into those
of the young, with no Ioss--nay, with a bene-
fit to the former.
Texas offers a habitabie surface probably
equal to foil one fourth of the Union as now
peoplcd. TO bring it rapidly into settlement
and Improvement, there must then be some
thing like a proportionafe transfer Of capital
and population lin other words, the reduction
ofthesq, throughout the present States at large
must approach to something like the rate of
25 per cent.
Such, however, it is easy to see, will not be
the effect in all quarters alike the depletion
will be but slight from certain quarters of the
country, andit may be almost total from others.
The Northern and Free States will, in gene
raj, but send Forth thither a few casual wan
derers or adventures from the freer track of
Westward migration, now to be left them by
the diversion of the great stream flowing ont
OF Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia
while the main and direct drain must be from
the Slave States, the inhabitants of which
alone are fitted, by climate, pursuits, and in
stiIutions, to the new region so that the ex-
hausti0n in question must be almost entirely
confined 10 them, and must operate, of course,
upon only about one-third of the Union, whose
entire population will therefore only exceed
what Texas will swallow up by about the ra-
ito which a third bears to a fourth. 1t is clear,
therefore, that the ebb of population from the
Slave States to an unexhausted soil, and a CHI
mate far more propitious for the employment
of the African laborer,a must be very great,
and that the Slave States generally must be
large losers in the value of the property which
migration will leave them.
One step, further, however. The process
ir question will act unequalIy upon the Slave
States themselves, according as sIaYe-labor is
now prof able or Improbable amongst them.
Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama
NAV somewhat vie, in climate aud soil, with
and will therefore be less inJurjously
while the employment Of servlle la
Dor must be absolutely aunIhiIated in Della
ware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South
Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and heatucky. |
contain near two millions OF slaves !; 1t
is difficult to imagine how any part OF them
should be kept from leaving them. We make
little doubt that the entire black population
will be carried off. OF these, one-haIf may
be sold and leave their price behind them the
rest will probably migrate with their owners.
1t is not difficult TO calculate the value of a
of slaves: With them, it is safe to say
that full a million Of the whites will abandon
their native seats, carrying with them at least
enough to purchase and to fit for cul-
.tivation the lands to which they are to 90. We
pretend not to estimate the amount of wealth
which will be thus transferred but it can
hardly fail to rise to something like the sum
represented by the slaves removed, not sold.
OF magnitude something like this must be
TO the deserted region, this loss Of propesy,
stimulated as it will be BY not only the charm
which the last new-found Hesperia, the latest
Land Of Promise, has for our people, but by
individual and public embarrassments, by debt
and heavy taxation. The spectacle viii, We
have little doubt, approach to that bold figure
by which the historians Of the day describe