TABLE NO. XXXVI.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF THE FREE STATES—1850.
TABLE NO. XXXVII.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN THE SLAVE STATES—1850.
TABLE NO. XXXVIII.
LIBRARIES OTHER THAN PRIVATE IN THE FREE STATES—1850.
TABLE NO. XXXIX.
LIBRARIES OTHER THAN PRIVATE IN THE SLAVE STATES—1850.
TABLE NO. XL.
NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS PUBLISHED IN THE FREE STATES—1850.
TABLE NO. XLI.
NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS PUBLISHED IN THE SLAVE STATES—1850.
TABLE NO. XLII.
ILLITERATE WHITE ADULTS IN THE FREE STATES—1850.
TABLE NO. XLIII.
ILLITERATE WHITE ADULTS IN THE SLAVE STATES—1850.
TABLE NO. XLIV.
NATIONAL POLITICAL POWER OF THE FREE STATES—1857.
TABLE NO. XLV.
NATIONAL POLITICAL POWER OF THE SLAVE STATES—1857.
TABLE NO. XLVI.
POPULAR VOTE FOR PRESIDENT BY THE FREE STATES—1856.
TABLE NO. XLVII.
POPULAR VOTE FOR PRESIDENT BY THE SLAVE STATES—1856.
TABLE NO. XLVIII.
VALUE OF CHURCHES IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE STATES—1850.
TABLE NO. XLIX.
PATENTS ISSUED ON NEW INVENTIONS IN THE FREE AND IN THE SLAVE STATES—1856.
TABLE NO. L.
BIBLE CAUSE AND TRACT CAUSE IN THE FREE STATES—1855.
TABLE NO. LI.
BIBLE CAUSE AND TRACT CAUSE IN THE SLAVE STATES—1855.
TABLE NO. LII.
MISSIONARY CAUSE AND COLONIZATION[4]CAUSE IN THE FREE STATES—1855-1856.
TABLE NO. LIII.
MISSIONARY CAUSE AND COLONIZATION[4]CAUSE IN THE SLAVE STATES—1855-1856.
TABLE NO. LIV.
DEATHS IN THE FREE STATES—1850.[5]
TABLE NO. LV.
DEATHS IN THE SLAVE STATES—1850.[5]
TABLE NO. LVI.
FREE WHITE MALE PERSONS OVER FIFTEEN YEARS OF AGE
ENGAGED IN AGRICULTURAL AND OTHER OUT-DOOR LABOR IN THE SLAVE-STATES—1850.
Too hot in the South, and too unhealthy there—white men “can’t stand it”—negroes only can endure the heat of Southern climes! How often are our ears insulted with such wickedly false assertions as these! In what degree of latitude—pray tell us—in what degree of latitude do the rays of the sun become too calorific for white men? Certainly in no part of the United States, for in the extreme South we find a very large number of non-slaveholding whites over the age of fifteen, who derive their entire support from manual labor in the open fields. The sun, that bugbear of slaveholding demagogues, shone on more than one million of free white laborers—mostly agriculturists—in the slave States in 1850, exclusive ofthose engaged in commerce, trade, manufactures, the mechanic arts, and mining. Yet, notwithstanding all these instances of exposure to his wrath, we have had no intelligence whatever of a single case ofcoup de so-leil. Alabama is not too hot; sixty-seven thousand white sons of toil till her soil. Mississippi is not too hot; fifty-five thousand free white laborers are hopeful devotees of her out-door pursuits. Texas is not too hot; forty-seven thousand free white persons, males, over the age of fifteen, daily perform their rural vocations amidst her unsheltered air.
It is stated on good authority that, in January, 1856, native ice, three inches thick, was found in Galveston Bay; we have seen it ten inches thick in North Carolina, with the mercury in the thermometer at two degrees below zero. In January, 1857, while the snow was from three to five feet deep in many parts of North Carolina, the thermometer indicated a degree of coldness seldom exceeded in any State in the Union—thirteen degrees below zero. The truth is, instead of its being too hot in the South for white men, it is too cold for negroes; and we long to see the day arrive when the latter shall have entirely receded from their uncongenial homes in America, and given full and undivided place to the former.
Too hot in the South for white men! It is not too hot for white women. Time and again, in different counties in North Carolina, have we seen the poor white wife of the poor white husband, following him in the harvest-field from morning till night, binding up the grain as it fell from his cradle. In the immediate neighborhood from which we hail, there are not less than thirty youngwomen, non-slaveholding whites, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five—some of whom are so well known to us that we could call them by name—who labor in the fields every summer; two of them in particular, near neighbors to our mother, are in the habit of hiring themselves out during harvest-time, the very hottest season of the year, to bind wheat and oats—each of them keeping up with the reaper; and this for the paltry consideration of twenty-five cents per day.
That any respectable man—any man with a heart or a soul in his composition—can look upon these poor toiling white women without feeling indignant at that accursed system of slavery which has entailed on them the miseries of poverty, ignorance, and degradation, we shall not do ourself the violence to believe. If they and their husbands, and their sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters, are not righted in some of the more important particulars in which they have been wronged, the fault shall lie at other doors than our own. In their behalf, chiefly, have we written and compiled this work; and until our object shall have been accomplished, or until life shall have been extinguished, there shall be no abatement in our efforts to aid them in regaining the natural and inalienable prerogatives out of which they have been so infamously swindled. We want to see no more plowing, or hoeing, or raking, or grain-binding, by white women in the Southern States; employment in cotton-mills and other factories would be far more profitable and congenial to them, and this they shall have within a short period after slavery shall have been abolished.
Too hot in the South for white men! What is the testimony of reliable Southrons themselves? Says Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky:—
“In the extreme South, at New Orleans, the laboring men—the stevedores and hackmen on the levee, where the heat is intensified by the proximity of the red brick buildings, are all white men, and they are in the full enjoyment of health. But how about Cotton? I am informed by a friend of mine—himself a slaveholder and therefore good authority—that in Northwestern Texas, among the German settlements, who true to their national instincts, will not employ the labor of a slave—they produce more cotton to the acre, and of a better quality, and selling at prices from a cent to a cent and a half a pound higher than that produced by slave labor.”
Says Gov. Hammond, of South Carolina:—
“The steady heat of our summers is not so prostrating as the short, but frequent and sudden, bursts of Northern summers.”
In an extract which may be found in our second chapter, and to which we respectfully refer the reader, it will be seen that this same South Carolinian, speaking of “not less than fifty thousand” non-slaveholding whites, says—“most of these now follow agricultural pursuits.”
Says Dr. Cartwright of New Orleans:—
“Here in New Orleans, the larger part of the drudgery—work requiring exposure to the sun, as railroad-making, street-paving, dray-driving, ditching and building, is performed by white people.”
To the statistical tables which show the number of deaths in the free and in the slave States in 1850, we would direct special attention. Those persons, particularlythe propogandists of negro slavery, who, heretofore, have been so dreadfully exercised on account of what they have been pleased to term “the insalubrity of Southern climes,” will there find something to allay their fearful apprehensions. A critical examination of said tables will disclose the fact that, in proportion to population, deaths occur more frequently in Massachusetts than in any Southern State except Louisiana; more frequently in New York than in any of the Southern States, except Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Texas; more frequently in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, and in Ohio, than in either Georgia, Florida, or Alabama. Leaving Wisconsin and Louisiana out of the account, and then comparing the bills of mortality in the remaining Northern States, with those in the remaining Southern States, we find the difference decidedly in favor of the latter; for, according to this calculation, while the ratio of deaths is as only one to 74.60 of the living population in the Southern States, it is as one to 72.39 in the Northern.
Says Dr. J. C. Nott, of Mobile:—
“Heat, moisture, animal and vegetable matter are said to be the elements which produce the diseases of the South, and yet the testimony in proof of the health of the banks of the lower portion of the Mississippi River, is too strong to be doubted,—not only the river itself but also the numerous bayous which meander through Louisiana. Here is a perfectly flat alluvial country, covering several hundred miles, interspersed with interminable lakes, lagunes and jungles, and still we are informed by Dr. Cartwright, one of the most acute observers of the day, that this country is exempt from miasmatic disorders, and is extremely healthy. His assertion has been confirmed to me by hundreds of witnesses, and we know from our own observation, that the population present a robust and healthy appearance.”
But the best part is yet to come. In spite of all the blatant assertions of the oligarchy, that the climate of the South was arranged expressly for the negroes, and that the negroes were created expressly to inhabit it as the healthful servitors of other men, a carefully kept register of all the deaths that occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, for the space of six years, shows that, even in that locality which is generally regarded as so unhealthy, the annual mortality was much greater among the blacks, in proportion to population, than among the whites. Dr. Nott himself shall state the facts. He says:—
“The average mortality for the last six years in Charleston for all ages is 1 in 51, including all classes. Blacks alone 1 in 44; whites alone, 1 in 58—a very remarkable result, certainly. This mortality is perhaps not an unfair test, as the population during the last six years has been undisturbed by emigration and acclimated in a greater proportion than at any former period.”
Numerous other authorities might be cited in proof of the general healthiness of the climate south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Of 127 remarkable cases of American longevity, published in a recent edition of Blake’s Biographical Dictionary, 68 deceased centenarians are credited to the Southern States, and 59 to the Northern—the list being headed with Betsey Trantham, of Tennessee—a white woman, who died in 1834, at the extraordinarily advanced age of 154 years.
TABLE NO. LVII.
NATIVES OF THE SLAVE STATES IN THE FREE STATES, AND NATIVES OF THE FREE STATES IN THE SLAVE STATES.—1850.
This last table, compiled from the 116th page of the Compendium of the Seventh Census, shows, in a most lucid and startling manner, how negroes, slavery and slaveholders are driving the native non-slaveholding whites away from their homes, and keeping at a distance other decent people. From the South the tide of emigration still flows in a westerly and north-westerly direction, and it will continue to do so until slavery is abolished. The following remarks, which we extract from an editorial article that appeared in the Memphis (Tenn.)Bulletinnear the close of the year 1856, are worth considering in this connection:—
“We have never before observed so large a number of immigrants going westward as are crossing the river at this point daily, the two ferry boats—sometimes three—going crowded from early morn until the boats cease making their trips at night. It is no uncommon sight to see from twenty to forty wagons encamped on the bluff for the night, notwithstanding there has been a steady stream going across the river all day, and yet the cry is, still they come.”
About the same time the Cassville (Geo.)Standardspoke with surprise of the multitude of emigrants crowding the streets of that town bound for the far West.
Prof. B. S. Hedrick, late of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, says:—