The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1860-02-09
OF THE SLAVE PoPULA.
TION b

We call the attention Of our Southern readers
to the article on this subject, from the pen of 8
They may deprecate the agi-
tation Of the slavery question, II they please, but
here is great fact, which either they or their
posterity will be compelled TO take cognizance
of. The increase of population is a law as lit
tie dependent upon the will of rulers as gravi-
taton or fermentation. In vain will the friends
of slavery endeavor to hush it up. The evil is
upon them, and still grows larger, day by day.
In century, as shown by our correspondent,
the South will contain forty millions of negroes.
Here is no fancy picture-no goblin born of
a diseased imagination--but frightful reality
Is it crime to remind the South that popula-
ton increases in geometrical ratio2 Will the
people of that section shut their ears and close
their eyes, and denounce as as public enemies,
for warning them of the fearful future that hes
before them?
In vain will the Southern people aatter them
selves that if slavery increases numerically, it
will be proportionally extended. There is no
ground for such a hope. There are various
causes which forbid it. In the first place, there
is little prospect of extending the system at all.
Slavery at present is under no necessity Of er-
pansion, and there erists no tendency to,oards
IT, Before the era of railroads, the case was
otherwise. Then, few years of slave cultiya-
ton served to exhaust the soil, and TO compel
emigration. But internal improvements have
enabled the South to improve its agriculture,
and to bring a vast deal of land under cultiva-
a. al
unavailable. The prosperity Of the South--its
internal development-has been fatal to its ex-
pansive tendency. In the first half century of
our national existence, as well as during the
colonial era, the South expanded faster than
the North and Kentucky and Tennessee were
peopled before Ohio. The South not only won
these fine Territories from free labor, but came
very near seizing Indiana and Illinois. Indeed,
slavery did make its way into these Territories,
but public virtue was still strong enough to re-
sist, and to hold them to the principles of the
ordinance of 1887. Missouri, though far remote
from the old slave States-as remote, all things
considered, as California was in l85O--fell
prey to the grasping ambition of the slave In
terest; and but for the famous compromise of
1920, the institution would have taken root in
what is now Kansas and Nebraska That act
of restriction, though repealed in 1854, did its
work. 1t held back slavery until the free-labor
element in the country, backed by foreign i'm
migration, was able to stay its progress, with
out the intervention Of Government. The first
indication of the change in the relative strength
of the two forces was given in 1850, when Cali
fornia was made a free State, by the mere pre-
ponderance of the free-labor element, and
against the INSCRIPTIONS intrigues of the poll
ticians of the territory, most of whom were
from the South. In 1854, '55, SO, and '57, the
superior energy of free labor over slavery made
itself manifest, in the Kansas struggle, under
circumstances still less favorable; and there re-
mains no longer any danger of carrying the in
stitution into the. Territories now belonging to
the Union.
The result of this change in the relative
strength of free and slave labor has been to
cause a remarkable change of position among
politicians in regard to the power and duty of
Congress. When it was almost matter of
course that every Territory where slavery was
tolerated would become slave State, the North
contended that Congress should exclude it but
since it is apparent that slavery can be whipped
and driven off the field by free labor, it cs mot be
denied that many anti-sfavery men are growing
Indifferent about exercising the right of slavery
restriction. On the other hand, the Demo
cratic" or pro slavery politicians, who formerly
boosted that they only asked to be let alone,
and that they never asked the Government to
protect slavery, now make it an essential plank
in their platforms that slavery must be protect
ed in the Territories.
Here, then, is a fact calculated to discourage
the hopes of the slavery propagandsts. But
there is another, equally fatal to their pros
poets. There is no country south or west of
the present boundaries Of the slave States which
is peculiarly adapted to slavery. Mexico was
subject to Spain and to the law of slavery for
three centuries and yet it probably never con-
tanned twenty thousand African slaves. 1t has
never produced any staple of frstrate import
ance, and hence slavery has never taken root.
1t is probable that, with no obstacle in the way,
slavery would gradually diffuse itself over that
country, but the shareholders would FIRST settle
up the far better lands in Texas, Louisiana,
Mississippi and Arkansas, which still remain
untouched in their virgin fertility. But that they
will leave better lands behind them, in order to
wage a bootless war with free labor, such as
they had experience of in Kansas, is highly
improbable.
Mexico has in all its more desirable States
large population at the present time, free
population, hostile to slavery; and this of itself,
would be an insuperable obstacle to the intro
duction of slavery. IL we add to it the free-la-
Dor immigration which would pour in from the
North and from Europe in the event of its an
nexation, there remains scarcely possibility
that slavery could be introduced. The slaves,
as fast as they should be carried to Mexico, |
would blend with its mixed population on
equal terms, and would find ten friends where
the master would find one.
There is therefore no probability that slavery
will ever go beyond its present limits; and, as
our correspondent has shown, the South will in
a century contain forty millions of bondmen
and free blacks. That their enormous increase
will drive out the poor whites, we have no doubt
A State census was taken in South Carolina
last year, which exhibited the melancholy fact,
that, even in that sparsely peopIed State, the
blacks are crowding outthe poor whites, and
in effect that South Carolina is becoming AT
ricanized. If such consequences flow from sIa.
very where the population is sparse, not num-
bering more than twenty6veto the square mile,