in the United States in Fifty Years. 95 



showing an excess of 230,000, after allowing for the decennial 

 increase 32.2 per cent ; whilst, on the other hand, Maryland, Vir- 

 ginia, and the Carolinas, had a smaller number of slaves in 1830 

 than in 1840, by 21,000, though their natural increase, at the same 

 rate of 32.2 per cent, would have amounted to 334,000. So great 

 a number as these facts imply, transported from a more, to a less 

 salubrious climate, and often subjected to new habits of life and 

 new modes of treatment, necessarily supposes a great increase of 

 mortality, without the aid of cholera, and other epidemics, which, 

 however, did their part also in the waste of life. 



4. The slower rate of natural increase in most of the south- 

 western States. Although the slaves may have, as we have 

 supposed, the same ratio of increase in the same State, they may 

 have very different ratios in different States, according to diversities 

 of climate, occupation, and treatment ; and the census shows that 

 the States to which so many slaves were carried between 1830 

 and 1840, for the culture of cotton, are much less favourable to the 

 natural multiplication of that class, or, at least, have hitherto been 

 so, than are the States, from which they were transported, as may 

 be thus seen : 



In 1840, the total number of slaves, and that of the slave child- 

 ren under ten, were respectively as follows : 



In Al-ibama, whole number of slaves, 253,532 — number of children under 10, 87,430 



In Mississippi, " " 195,211 " " " 63,708 



In Louisiana, " " 168,452 " " " 45,861 



In Florida, " " 25,717 " " '• 8,036 



Total 642,912 205,035 



If, on the whole number of slaves, 642,912, we take 34.9 per 

 cent as the proportion of children under ten, (which was the pro- 

 portion throughout the Union in 1830.) it will give 224,376 for the 

 number of children in 1840, which is 19,341 more than the number 

 returned by the census. It may be supposed by some that, inasmuch 

 as the States in question received large importations of slaves from 

 other States, of whom there was an over proportion of adults, a 

 part, if not the whole of the deficiency here mentioned, may be 

 referred to such importations, and that it would be compensated 

 by an excess of children in the slave-exporting States. But we 

 perceive no such disproportion of adults in the case of slaves trans- 

 ferred from State to State, as exists in the case of emigrants from 

 foreign countries. When the slave-holder migrates to the south, 

 none of his slaves are too young to be taken with him, and it is the 



