Freedom had secured, in 1860, a population of twenty millions, while the Slave Power had reached but twelve millions, one third of whom were slaves. From 1850 to 1860 the Union _gained_ almost as much in population as the entire census of 1820; and of that gain the North secured forty-one and the South but twenty-seven per cent. The slave population increased but twenty-three per cent. At this rate of increase the year 1900 will see a population of one hundred millions in the Union, of whom nine millions will be negroes, and a vast majority of the white population located in territory now free. Between 1820 and 1860 five million emigrants reenforced the Union, of which the North received the greater portion. Between the war of 1814 and 1860, Great Britain and Ireland sent to us more people than inhabited the thirteen States that formed the Union, and of this immigrant population there was an excess of nine hundred and fifty thousand _men_--a nation poured in upon the great, free North, to reenforce the people. Already was this increase of free population telling upon slave labor in Slave States. Even in the Gulf cities Sambo was fast receding before the brawny arms of Hans and Patrick. Northwestern Texan was becoming a new Germany. Western Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware were rapidly losing in slave labor; while along the border had grown up a line of ten cities in Slave States, containing six hundred thousand people, of whom less than ten thousand were slaves. This line of cities, from Wilmington Delaware, to St. Louis, Missouri, was becoming a great cordon of free-labor citadels; supported in the rear by another line of Free Border-State cities, stretching from Philadelphia to Leavenworth, containing nine hundred thousand; thus _massing a free population of one million five hundred thousand in border cities that overlooked the land of despotism_. Then consider the growth of free agriculture. In 1860 the South had a cotton and rice crop as her exclusive possession. Already the Northwest was encroaching upon her sugar cultivation. Against her agriculture, mainly supported by one great staple, which can also be cultivated all round the globe, the free North could oppose every variety of crop; several of greater value than the boasted cotton. In all the grains, in cattle and the products of the dairy, in hay, in fruits; in the superior cultivation of land; in the vastly superior value of land; in agricultural machinery, probably representing a labor force equal to all the slaves--the superiority of freedom was too evident for discussion. _The value of agricultural machinery in the Free States had trebled between 1850 and 1860_. The Homestead Law was the fit result of this vast advance of free labor, and has sealed the destiny of every present and future Territory of the Union.