94 Progress of Population and Wealth 



The uniformity of increase in this part of our population was 

 presumed, because the same circumstances which tend to check 

 multiplication with the whites have no existence with the coloured 

 race ; certainly not with the slaves, who now constitute more than 

 six-sevenths of the whole, and, in 1790, constituted more than 

 eleven-twelfths. Nor are they likely to exist to the same extent in 

 the free coloured class as with the whites, since the diminution of 

 increase with these may be occasioned principally by the delay of 

 marriage in the richer classes of society, which cause might not 

 extend to the poorer, who now find it as easy to obtain the neces- 

 saries of life, and even its substantial comforts, as ever. No deduc- 

 tion was therefore made on account of the free coloured class. 



The census, unfortunately, affords us not the same means of 

 ascertaining the natural increase of the coloured population as of 

 that of the whites ; it not having distinguished the ages of coloured 

 persons before 1820, and having adopted a different distribution 

 then, from that made in the two subsequent enumerations. To these 

 last, therefore, our inquiries will be limited. 



As emancipation seeems not to have varied much in the two last 

 decennial terms, we will investigate the natural increase of the two 

 classes of the coloured race separately, beginning with the slaves. 



If the increase of slaves, from 1830 to 1840, had been propor- 

 tionally as great as it was from 1820 to 1830, the number at the 

 last census would have been 2,615,000, instead of 2,487,000; thus 

 showing a deficiency of 128.000. How is so great a deficiency to 

 be explained, without supposing a decline in the rate of increase? 

 The following circumstances obviously contributed to lessen the 

 number of slaves in 1840. 



1. Tfie emigration to Texas, which may account, perhaps, for 

 a third of the deficiency or more. 



2. The increase of runaway slaves. It is a fact of general 

 notoriety, that the number of those who have taken refuge in 

 Canada or the northern States, has greatly increased within the 

 last two years. 



3. The extraordinary mortality which prevailed in Mississippi, 

 Louisiana, and South Alabama, in the first year of the term, among 

 the slaves, and especially that large portion of them who had been 

 transported from the more northern slave-holding States. The 

 census shows the unwonted extent of such transportation. In the 

 three States of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the slaves, 

 which in 1830 were 292,796, in 1840 amounted to 617,195, thus 



