Being the result of the vices engendered by slavery, it is to be
hoped that the emancipation of the blacks, by securing to them a
legal recognition of their natural ties, will tend to diminish this
unnatural amalgamation and lessen everywhere the number of these
unfortunate half-breeds. My reason for believing that the colored
population of the North will gradually vanish is founded in great
degree upon the fact that that population does not increase where
it exists now, but is constantly recruited by an influx from the
South. The southern half-breeds feel their false position at the
South more keenly than the blacks, and are more inclined to escape
to the North than the individuals of purer black blood. Remove the
oppression under which the colored population now suffers, and the
current will at once be reversed; blacks and mulattoes of the North
will seek the sunny South. But I see no cause which should check
the increase of the black population in the Southern States. The
climate is genial to them; the soil rewards the slightest labor
with a rich harvest. The country cannot well be cultivated without
real or fancied danger to the white man, who, therefore, will not
probably compete with the black in the labors of the field, thus
leaving to him an opportunity for easy and desirable support.
3rd. In those sections where the blacks and mulattoes together make
from seventy to eighty and even ninety per cent of the population
will there be, after the abolition of slavery, a sufficiently large
influx of whites to counteract the present numerical preponderance
of blacks?
To answer this question correctly we must take into consideration
the mode of distribution of the white and of the colored population
in the more Southern States. The whites inhabit invariably the
sea-shores and the more elevated grounds, while the blacks are
scattered over the lowlands. This peculiar localization is rendered
necessary by the physical constitution of the country. The lowlands
are not habitable in summer by the whites between sunset and
sunrise. All the wealthy whites, and in the less healthy regions
even the overseers, repair in the evening to the sea-shore or to
the woodlands, and return only in the morning to the plantation,
except during the winter months, after the first hard frost, when
the country is everywhere habitable by all. This necessarily limits
the area which can be tenanted by the whites, and in some States
that area is very small as compared with that habitable by the
blacks. It is therefore clear that with a free black population,
enjoying identical rights with the whites, these States will sooner
or later become negro States, with a comparatively small white
population. This is inevitable; we might as soon expect to change
the laws of nature as to avert this result. I believe it may in a
certain sense work well in the end. But any policy based upon
different expectations is doomed to disappointment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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