In studying the increase of the negro population it must be borne in mind that the figures of 1870 are admitted to be seriously inaccurate. There are some reasons also for doubting the accuracy of the census of the negroes in 1890. In order to avoid using these erroneous or questionable figures and also in order to base the computation on long periods of time, the increase has been computed by each of the five twenty-year periods of the nineteenth century. As the negro problem is preëminently one of interest to the South it seems fairer to compare the growth of the two races in that region. Such a comparison shows that the negro population of the South increased most rapidly during the first twenty years of the nineteenth century and that its rate of increase steadily declined to the end of the century. The rate of increase of southern whites was highest not from 1800 to 1820, but 1840 to 1860. Perhaps the results may be stated in a way to make them most easily intelligible by treating the rate of increase of whites in the southern States in the given twenty-year period as 100 and comparing with it the rate of increase of southern negroes during the same period of time. Following this method, the increase of the southern negroes, 1800 to 1820, was to that of southern whites as 125 to 100, that from 1820 to 1840 was 110, that from 1840 to 1860 was 87, that from 1860 to 1880 was 90, and that from 1880 to 1900 was 57. These figures show that since 1840 the increase of southern negroes has been less rapid than that of southern whites, that the increase from 1860 to 1880 was relatively more rapid than in the preceding or the following twenty-year period, suggesting that the period of war and of reconstruction affected the increase of the white race more than that of the negroes. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the southern negroes were increasing much faster than the southern whites. At the end of it they were increasing only about three-fifths as fast.