I20 Eugene Rollin Corson 



in precisely the same proportion, neither more nor less. These 

 figures are conclusive upon this point, and from them there is 

 no appeal. 



"But the fact remains that, in these cotton States, the 

 colored element was in 1880, in comparison with the white 

 element, slightly stronger than it was twenty years before. 

 This, however, is due not to a southward movement of the 

 colored people, but to a decrease in the rate of increase of the 

 whites of those States. While the increase of the native white 

 population in the country at large between i860 and 1880 was 

 61 percent., that part of the same element resident in the 

 cotton States increased but 39 per cent. This low rate of in- 

 crease among the whites might seem to establish Judge 

 Tourgee's position, though not in the way he states it, were 

 it not for the fact that three-fourths of this increase took place 

 during the decade between 1870 and 1880. The increase of 

 whites in the South received a most effectual check during the 

 four years of war, in which every male capable of bearing 

 arms was in the field, and in which fully half a million laid 

 down their lives. Since the war the white race has taken up 

 a rate of increase equal to, if not greater than, that of the 

 country at large, a greater rate than that of the colored j>eople 

 within its borders, and there is no apparent reason why they 

 should not maintain it. It is not, then, a migration of the 

 negroes southward which has caused their relative gain in 

 these States, but it is the losses of the white race — losses 

 which, however, are rapidly being repaired." 



It will be interesting now to look to the deductions of the 

 Eleventh Census, and see to what extent it agrees and where 

 it differs from this succinct resume of Mr. Gannett. I have 

 before me Census Bulletin No. 48, giving the white and the 

 colored population of the South for 1890. As that section of 

 our country denominated the South Atlantic and South Cen- 

 tral States with Missouri and Kansas, contained fifteen-six- 

 teenths of the entire colored population of the United States, 

 a race count of these states was made in advance of the main 

 work of tabulation. The total population in this count was 

 found to be 23,875,259, of which 16,868,205 were whites, 



