Alabama 253,532 Arkansas 19,935 District of Columbia 4,694 Delaware 2,605 Florida 25,717 Georgia 280,944 Illinois 331 Kentucky 182,258 Louisiana 168,452 Maryland 89,737 Mississippi 195,211 Missouri 58,240 New Jersey 674 New York 4 CENSUS OF 1840.--SLAVE POPULATION.--(_Continued._) Pennsylvania 64 North Carolina 245,817 South Carolina 327,038 Tennessee 183,059 Virginia 449,087 --------- Aggregate 2,487,399 During the next decade the slave population swept forward to an increase of 716,858. The entire population of slaves was 3,204,313; 2,957,657 were unmixed Africans, and 246,656 were Mulattoes. The free Colored population amounted to 434,495, of whom 275,400 were unmixed, and 159,095 mixed or Mulatto. The total number of families owning slaves in 1850 was 347,525. CENSUS OF 1850.--SLAVE POPULATION. Alabama 342,844 Arkansas 47,100 District of Columbia 3,687 Delaware 2,290 Florida 39,310 Georgia 381,682 Kentucky 210,981 Louisiana 244,809 Maryland 90,368 Mississippi 309,878 Missouri 87,422 New Jersey 236 North Carolina 288,548 South Carolina 384,984 Tennessee 239,459 Texas 58,161 Virginia 472,528 Utah Territory 26 --------- Total 3,204,313 The Thirty-first Congress was three weeks attempting an organization, and at last effected it by the election of a Southerner to the Speakership, the Hon. Howell Cobb, of Georgia. President Zachary Taylor had called the attention of Congress to the admission of California and New Mexico into the Union, in his message to that body upon its assembling. On the 4th of January, 1850, Gen. Sam. Houston, United States Senator from Texas, submitted the following proposition to the Senate: