Slavery in Maryland, by John L. Carey—A Project Gutenberg eBook

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-five, in the clerk’s office of the District Court of Maryland.

Dear Sir,—A short time before the October election, I heard some one say that it was your intention to devote much of your time, should you be elected to the House of Delegates, to the subject of the black population of our State, and to promote, if possible, measures for their gradual emancipation. It gave me, a slaveholder and citizen of Maryland, infinite pleasure to hear it; and it was with the deepest regret I learned soon after that you were not returned to the house. If I have been correctly informed, I beg leave to say I honor you for your sentiment, and I hope you will not allow so good a resolution to die, but will kindle it anew, and seek some other equally practical means of bringing this subject fully and fairly before the public. It is one that has long occupied much of my thoughts, and I have watched anxiously for some one to show his hand in this cause. At this moment my attention has been more distinctly called to it, by the manly, high-minded letter of Mr. C. M. Clay, addressed to the people of Kentucky. There is not a sentiment or a political principle expressed by him to his fellow citizens that does not with equal force apply to our noble little State, and every prediction applies to us as forcibly as it does to them. The time has come, there can be no doubt of it, to take the needful steps; slaveholders themselves are anxious for it, and will not be displeased to see the subject fairly taken into consideration. I have been a planter for five years, and have had an opportunity of discussing these points with slaveholders of all parties, and I do not remember a single instance in which objection[Pg 4] was made to the principle of emancipation; some difference, it is true, exists as to the manner and time, but none as to the necessity. Heretofore this whole subject has been wrapt in a mystery, as imposing as the secrets of Free Masonry, and no one, not a member of the order of slaveholders, has been allowed to open his mouth and say any thing about it; it is a dangerous question—it is an exciting subject—it is a matter that belongs to slaveholders themselves—have been the usual and repeated injunctions laid upon all who honestly and humanely have desired to inquire into the merits and demerits of this cause. Is this as it should be? Is it the course that should be pursued by an educated people, who have at command the means to defend the truth and expose error? Certainly not. If our State is laboring under an evil, let the cause and nature of the malady be investigated, and then let us apply the remedy. If, on the contrary, none can be shown to exist, at least agitation will receive a check that will be grateful to all lovers of peace and order. Firmly convinced that such a course will be displeasing to but few, and that it may promote the general welfare of Maryland, I beg leave to propose to you the establishment of a paper devoted to the cause of Emancipation in our State, on the principles of policy, humanity, and self-interest. I know no one to whom so delicate a subject could be so safely confided as yourself. Your popularity as an editor, your established character for sound doctrine and moderation, are all guarantees for the judicious and successful conduct of such an undertaking, and, for my own part, I have not the least doubt of its ultimate success. It would be idle in me to suggest to you any particulars on this subject; I doubt not it has passed through your brain long since, and received a due share of your consideration. I shall therefore conclude, by begging you to excuse the liberty I have taken in[Pg 5] addressing you on so slight a personal acquaintance, and by hoping, if I am premature in what I have said, that you will impute it solely to the strong feelings I entertain upon this interesting matter.

Dear Sir,—Your letter, which reached me this morning, relates to a subject which has, indeed, been much in my mind. Some months ago I began to put on paper a few thoughts concerning it, in the hope that a speedy restoration of our State’s financial affairs would leave the way clear for a fair consideration of Slavery as it exists in Maryland. Your letter seems to come as an intimation that the time for considering that matter is already at hand—as such I receive it. I will write out what I designed, and send it to you. In doing this the occasion may be taken to refer to some suggestions in your letter, which in the meantime will remain in my thoughts. Your favorable regards I appreciate highly, and thank you for the kind expression of them.

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SLAVERY IN MARYLAND.

I propose to treat of Slavery in the State of Maryland, believing that a fair inquiry into that subject at the present time may lead to good results. The institution itself has existed long enough in this community, and has produced consequences sufficiently marked and decisive to enable an impartial observer to form a definite opinion of its nature and tendencies. I believe that such an opinion has been formed by the general mind of the commonwealth.

Before we proceed to the particular matter in hand, it may be proper to have an understanding upon some preliminaries. There is so much sensitiveness with regard to Slavery; so much irritated feeling; it has been and is the cause of so much ill-judged agitation, giving rise to unhappy manifestations of moral and political fanaticism,—that one needs to move very cautiously in touching upon the topic at all, lest he do more harm than good by meddling with it. But, for my own part, as I have no design to minister to excitement, nor to deal with the subject as an advocate of extreme opinions, it shall be my care to regard the question as one requiring to be practically considered by those whom it most concerns, and to express as clearly as possible what it is in my mind now to say about it. Not to be misunderstood is a thing to be greatly desired by those who would treat justly such a question as this—or indeed any serious[Pg 8] question; but then, indeed, one ought to have something to say worth the trouble of understanding. Let us now hasten to get through the preliminaries.

I. Of Slavery itself as a Social Relation.

If Slavery be regarded as the subjection of one man, by force, to the will of another, all other considerations being left out of view, it must appear to be the most cruel outrage to which humanity is liable.

But the control of one man over another, of some men over other men, of individuals over masses, may exist without implying outrage or wrong.

It is as a representative that man exercises power—as the representative of truths, principles, sentiments. Thus the officials of a government, few in number, representing order and justice, personify the sovereignty of the realm, and rule over millions.

The will and the understanding constitute the man; the strength and purity of the one, the capacity of the other, form the measure of his just influence. Sometimes it may happen, when there is need that a nation should have the energy of action and singleness of purpose of an individual mind, that a man shall arise capable of embodying in himself the intellect and the will of the nation, which he will then control with despotic sway. Such was Napoleon in the earlier period of his career, who with some show of truth could have adopted the saying of one of his predecessors on the throne of France, “l’état c’est moi.”

Slavery, if it implies the degradation of an equal, or the subjugation by brute force of a superior—what is it but a shocking atrocity, most monstrous to think of! When we read of the enslaving of Christians, refined and intelligent persons, by the corsairs of Algiers, as used in former times to happen, the mind revolts at such violations of right and justice.

It is usual, when one speaks of Slavery, to imagine himself in the condition of servitude, and thence to form his conceptions of the injustice of that relation, and to express[Pg 9] his indignation accordingly. But this is to take a very partial view of the matter.

Freedom, in its usual acceptation, means the absence of external control. But there must be a power to control some where. If it be not in the will and understanding of the man himself, it must be in the will and understanding of some one else; if not in one or the other, after some fashion, then society perishes. In other words, men or nations who can not govern themselves must be governed.

A perverted will or an imbecile understanding, at certain stages, works the forfeit of freedom in the freest communities on earth. Prisons and penitentiaries are for the one; lunatic asylums for the other. Children, wanting the power of self-direction, are kept under control for a period more than half as long as the average duration of human life.

With regard to servitude, there are various degrees of it. In some parts of Europe serfdom exists, with its usages more or less restrictive. In all the kingdoms of Europe there are subordinations of ranks, by which some classes are constituted superior and others are kept in subjection. There is but one principle running through all these gradations. Control on the one hand; obedience on the other; these are the correlatives. In whatever forms, modes, customs, institutions or laws, these relations may be reduced to actual operation; whether the terms to denote them be king and subject, lord and vassal, upper classes and lower classes, or master and slave, the ideas of command and subjugation, in some form or other, are still presented.

The question then is of more or less freedom. For if Freedom be used to denote a positive definite thing, or, in the slang of metaphysics, an abstract right, where is the standard to be fixed to measure it by? Shall we look to England, and take the half starved operative as the type of this impalpable entity—the half starved operative, with freedom only to choose whether he shall be a drudge or a pauper, and often saved the trouble of deciding by finding himself both? The English operative! part and[Pg 10] parcel of the machinery which fills the markets of the world with British manufactures—a working anatomy of bone and muscle, animated by a vital principle instead of steam, and thereby differing from the other works and running gear of the mills!

The relation of master and slave implies the extremes of control on the one hand, and obedience on the other; some intermediate forms of which extend throughout all society. Whether the relation be proper or not, must depend mainly on the greater or less disparity between the two classes, and the circumstances which mark their connection. If the masters be of one race, and the slaves of another; if they be of different complexions; if the former be characterized by great strength of will and capacity of understanding, while the latter are weak in both; it is inevitable, if these two races must dwell together in one community, that the one should occupy the position of masters and the other that of slaves. They could not hold intercourse together on any other terms. If the inferior race should prove fierce and intractable, like our aboriginal Indians, they must disappear as the master power approaches; if they are docile and gentle, like the negroes, they may live in domestic servitude, and thrive in that condition. It may be remarked that the negro is the only race that has ever been able to abide in contact with the Anglo-Saxon.

II. Of Rights.[1]

It may be asked, have not all enslaved people a right to freedom? To which it may be answered that rights are connected with duties; or, to go back to the other definition, the will and the understanding of a man, the strength of the one and the capacity of the other, combined together, constitute the measure of his rights, inasmuch as they are the measure of the sphere which he fills.

Freedom involves certain responsibilities, which, if a man can not meet, he is not free. Besides, Freedom is a relative thing—a thing of degrees. How much of external restraint must be thrown off to constitute Freedom? No one can say; it can not be defined by specific limits.

If we go to talking of abstract rights, we shall discourse very vaguely and to little purpose. The phrase itself is unmeaning; for rights can be considered only as pertaining to persons. Thus they can not be abstract at all.

Nor will it do to assume the position of the equality of all men, and to reason from it on this subject. Men are not equal. They are not born so; they do not become so; they can not be made equal. Neither in physical endowments, in stature, nor in the gifts of intellect are they upon an equality. The influence of some over others results from laws as fixed and as imperative as the laws of gravitation, of magnetic attraction, or any other laws of nature. The power of truth over the mind, the force of courage and decision of character in action, the influence which belongs to superior wisdom and goodness—these give preeminence to individuals in all forms of social organization. A civilized people hold ascendency over the less civilized; the particular nature of which ascendency will be determined by the circumstances attendant on the contact of the two, and their characteristics respectively. The sullen Indian, feeling the superiority of the white man, flies from before it, or is crushed beneath it; the tractable negro acknowledges its sway, and yields himself contentedly thereto.

Men can not associate with children without holding them to obedience; and children expect such control. If they do not find it, they regard their weak elders slightingly enough. Tinctured with love and kindness, this control is a delightful bond of affinity, blending the solicitude of mature years with the tenderest affections of childhood.

What other principle can hold in respect to the intercourse of different classes of men brought into association,[Pg 12] no matter by what means, in one community, the disparity between the two being as great as that between childhood and maturity? The two elements of civilization and primitive rudeness entering together into the social organization, the control of the superior element must take the permanent form of an institution; the relations of the two must be fixed upon a firm basis. Otherwise how could there be a permanent organization?

If the inferior race should remain in a mass to themselves, it would be in a position antagonistic to the superior, and must perish. Like the Helots of Sparta, they might be slaves to the community; but only so when the community was the only personality, the citizens living in common, and merging each his individual character in that of the State. Upon reflection it will be seen that personal servitude to particular masters would constitute the only mode by which the interests of the two races could be harmonized; by which the inferior might be diffused through the other, so as to come most beneficially in contact with it, by which, in short, the safety of the inferior might be secured, and a domestic relationship be established in place of implacable hostility. This, however, presupposes docility in the inferior race.

The authority of a parent over the child is as absolute as that of the master over the slave, so far as the power to enforce obedience goes. The first, however, is mingled with parental affection, which gives assurance of kindness and the tenderest care. But it may be abused, and often it is.

There is no such assurance that the authority of the master will be tempered and regulated by kindness and solicitude. Hence in due time come the evils of the relation—the master forgetting the obligations of his position, and looking upon his servants as so many chattels fit only to minister to his avarice or his pleasure.

A further analogy may be stated: that as the control of parental authority, proper over the child, would be improper after the child has become a man, so the condition of servitude, rightly to be regarded as one of tutelage, and proper only in that view, must after a time[Pg 13] cease to be just—because incompatible with progress after a certain point. It can not be supposed that any race of men, the most humble in the grade of civilization, are destined to be always slaves.

III. Of Slavery as it relates to the Negroes in the United States.

The negro race in the United States have derived great benefits from their condition of servitude. Let us have done with the wailings of weak sympathizers who know not what they would be at. No African has come as a slave to this country who was not a slave before. The exchange of masters which transferred the service of the negro from a barbarous owner in Africa to a civilized proprietor in America is likely to prove the salvation of the race. From time immemorial slavery has prevailed in Africa. The characteristics of slavery there, so terrible, so abominable that any condition of existence would seem preferable—how utterly are they forgotten by those who delight to dwell upon the “wrongs of the negro!” In the United States the negro has attained the Pisgah height from which he can look forward into a land of promise, rich in blessings. No event has happened in the history of Africa, since her degradation, so likely to result in good to her as the residence of Africans in this country. At this moment the negro colonist, conveyed from Maryland to the settlement at Cape Palmas, stands a superior being among the natives that surround him in the land of his progenitors. Servitude in the United States has been the school of discipline and of progress by means of which the black man may become fit for freedom.

Here, surrounded by the elements of civilization and Christian knowledge, the negro has imbibed largely of both. His nature is admirably adapted to catch the hue and quality of any notable characteristic of the superior people about him. He is imitative in a high degree; he is quick of apprehension; docile; easy of control, without a sense of degradation connected with his service.[Pg 14] The position of servitude, then, in a civilized community is adapted to him; he improves by it.

The natives of Africa at this day are just such a people as were the slaves first brought to America; just such a people as all the slaves were who have come from Africa to this country. If none had been brought to our shores; if the progenitors of the negroes now here had remained in Africa, their descendants would have been of like pattern with themselves; they would have been in all respects similar to the native tribes now found in Africa, because they would have been a portion of them.

But look at the contrast which is presented when you take one of our Maryland men of color and compare him with a native African. They hardly seem to belong to the same race. The colonist of Cape Palmas is very nearly, if not altogether, as much superior to the natives on the coast of Africa as the first settlers of America were to the aborigines.

What has caused this difference? There is but one answer. Through the ordeal of servitude in the United States the negro has passed into the threshold of civilization, into the portals of Christianity. Every moment of his existence among enlightened people has been one of progress. Like a negative body brought into connection with one fully charged, he has been continually a recipient; imparting nothing he has acquired from every surrounding source.

Let us reverently acknowledge the overruling power of Providence, by whose dispensation an unrighteous traffic has been made the means of benefit to a benighted race. Africa herself will hail, on her own shores, the return of her children who went forth in chains, and the still heavier bondage of ignorance and barbarism—but restored to her as freemen; the heralds of civilization; not as Israelites, bearing away the spoil of the Egyptians, but enriched in knowledge and virtue, and followed by the good will of their former masters.

I have deemed it the more important to set forth these views, because of the style of language so much in vogue[Pg 15] when the servitude of the negroes in this country is spoken of. How incessantly do we hear of the “wrongs of the African,” with abundance of that sort of phraseology which makes up so much of the cant of philanthropy.

I here say nothing of the slave trade. Let those condemn it who will; it is not for me to utter a word in its defence. But viewing the negroes in the United States as already here, no matter by what means brought, there is no question at all but that, as a race, their condition here has been a fortunate state of existence for them; whether as compared with their condition in Africa, where they were slaves, or as taken in connection with their moral and intellectual state and their adaptation to service.

It is perhaps too late in the day to hope for any assuaging of that strong feeling which prevails in some parts of the north on this subject—a feeling so strong and inflexible, that we see ecclesiastical organizations rent asunder by it. Yet must we deplore the prevalence of a spirit which exhibits itself in such unlovely forms of violence; and the more especially since there is no call for such manifestations. The race of people in whose behalf this agitation is made have never asked for it; nothing has done them so much harm already. It is a work of supererogation, so far as they are concerned—one of gratuitous injury. No thought seems to have been bestowed upon the condition in which the colored people would be placed, if abolitionism were every where successful. The active principle in the whole business, what has it been but an overpowering, inexorable sentiment of anathema and condemnation against slaveholders, who are so by the inevitable circumstances of their position, by the necessity of a transmitted heritage of social and political relationship? And this relationship is one for which Paul has given precepts and thus recognised—which Christianity has embraced as one of the varied features of social organization, bearing with it its peculiar obligations and duties.

If it were charged that the duties imposed by this[Pg 16] peculiar relationship had been lost sight of; if the masters were arraigned for cruelty and injustice in their sphere—then would there be a charge which could be judged of according to the facts. Master and servant—both have their respective obligations: the one to render obedience, not with eye-service, but truly; the other to exercise his power of direction as one acting in the sight of the great Master of all men.

Unfortunately this view is not taken. It is deemed a crime that a man shall be a master—though by ceasing to be so his servants might be the chief sufferers. All circumstances, facts, conditions are lost sight of; denunciation does not stop to discriminate; the slaves are made the objects of sympathy whether they will or not; and with a self-assumed superiority of righteousness, these Pharisees, who thank God that they are not as other men, pronounce judgment of condemnation, because other men are not as they are.

It would be well if these displays of superfluous solicitude, these copious outpourings of random philanthropy, involved nothing more than the waste of so much of the raw material of sentimental morality. But the arrogance of some and the vindictiveness of others of the abolitionists, blended with such exhibitions of phrenzy, has produced the reaction of disgust in the minds of the southern people—the reaction of indignation and defiance. In Virginia, the disposition which had been manifested to hasten the extinction of Slavery in 1832 was suddenly checked. So also in Kentucky. And, more lamentable still, the relation between master and slave, previously one of simplicity and confidence, and of kind domestic regard, was disturbed by the infusion of a harsher ingredient. The servant became restless and discontented; the master suspicious. I speak of the result of this abolition movement in Maryland. Who does not remember the old domestic relation of master and servant, so full of kindly household sympathies? There yet remain many specimens of that class of faithful attached servitors, whose pride in the family name and respectability, whose identification with the family[Pg 17] interests, was affiliated with the strongest personal affection for the master and his household. Many of those, we say, yet remain; they are to be found chiefly in the old families of Maryland, and in those parts of the State farthest removed from the abolition excitement. In the simple minds of those people no perception ever entered of the idea that their masters, the objects of their love and reverence, were robbers, man-stealers, or oppressors; they had no consciousness that they themselves were degraded by a service of which they were proud; and as to a deprivation of rights, they would have esteemed any rights hateful which would have compelled their separation from the hearth and home to which their affections were devoted. Is it not clear that in a position like this, so well adapted to the growth of good affections, a docile, mild, yet rude and simple people, might find the elements of improvement, might find themselves in circumstances beautifully suited to their state? What better school could there be for such a people in which to learn the rudiments of civilization? What a happy exchange for them to leave a barbarian master in Africa, a capricious and savage despot, who would inflict death or mutilation in any fit of passion, for the judicious control of the civilized white man, at once, a master, teacher, protector, and friend! How fortunate for the future prospects of the race that their lot was taken from the dreary barrenness of savage life, in Africa, with its cruelties, its debasing superstitions, its hideous brutalities and licentiousness, to be cast in the bosom of a Christian land, amid the elements of social refinement and political freedom? Of these the African in the United States has profited much. The well bred colored man in Maryland appreciates, to the full, the character of a gentleman; the self-governing colored man at Cape Palmas understands well the operation of republican institutions.

IV. How Slavery is to be regarded as an Institution: whether permanent or not.

If it is evident, from the foregoing, that the state of servitude has been well adapted to the condition of the negroes who were brought to this country; if it appears beyond all doubt that they have improved in that state; it is no less clear that the condition of Slavery is not adapted to their continued improvement—that it is in fact incompatible with their improvement beyond a certain point.

The uses of Slavery are those of tutelage; in other words, Slavery is beneficial and proper only in so far as it is a species of tutelage. But a state of tutelage must have an end; the child in due time grows beyond it. So of a race in servitude—for it is as a race that we are considering the negro and his position.

The law of progress is an inherent principle in every form of social organization; it is the mark of its vitality and the main element thereof. Efforts indeed have been made, and long persevered in, to defeat this tendency to development. Hence the organism of castes in Hindostan; hence the Chinese policy of prohibiting changes in the most trivial as well as the most important things. In both instances the mind is dwarfed, and unnatural exhibitions are produced from which civilization turns away with disgust. Society can not be petrified in fixed forms; stereotyped in one immovable aspect, like metal fused and cast in a mould. It has a vital principle; it is a living organization; it has powers of growth and expansion which must go on to their development, or the vital force, suppressed, will generate disorder in the system and manifest itself in the shapes of maladies and eruptions.

But what need is there of argument or illustration on so plain a point? Is it not palpable to the perception of every one that the idea of Slavery is utterly repugnant to the attainment by man, of his due stature and proportions in the world, of moral and civil action? The ascendency which superior intelligence gives may be used[Pg 19] to control the less enlightened, if it is found that control is necessary to the latter, from the circumstances of their position and their inability to govern themselves. But the ascendency of superior intelligence should be itself controlled by superior benevolence and justice; it should not be made the mere instrument of selfish ends. Slavery, let it be repeated, when right and proper, is a species of guardianship; a form of tutelage. In this view a good thing, it becomes, like other good things, when perverted, a pernicious evil.

I am aware that some distinguished gentlemen at the south maintain the doctrine that Slavery, as a permanent institution, is no evil; and they contend that, as a mode of organizing labor, it is better than the English system which makes the operatives by the mass the slaves of a social organization, which, cutting them off from the domestic sympathies of their employers, leaves them to a cold isolation and to the slender resources of a pittance, in the shape of scanty wages, and to the poor rates, contributed by a calculating cupidity, and reduced to the lowest minimum on this side of starvation.

It would not be to the purpose to enter into a comparison of these two systems. It is enough to know that neither can be permanent; because both are incompatible with the progress of mankind. There is this, however, to be noted. The aristocracy of Great Britain hold in servitude men of their own blood, race, and complexion; elements of Anglo-Saxon hardihood; bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh; millions worthy of a better state, and capable of appreciating better things. In this republic the servile class are of a race and complexion different from ours; just entering upon the borders of civilization, adapted from their characteristic disposition to service, and rapidly improving in the service of their superiors; incapable of holding any other relation, because incapable of being harmoniously blended with the general mass of society—a class whose condition, if liberated from the control and protection of individual masters yet remaining in the community, would be one of exposure to a thousand ills from which they are[Pg 20] now shielded. Gurth, the born thrall of Cedric the Saxon, found shelter under his master’s roof; in sickness a master’s care; in old age, sustenance from a master’s hand. He was one of a household sharing in the life thereof, in its loves and fears, its attachments and feuds, its domestic endearments, its homefelt enjoyments. The English operative of this day has no such associations as these. There are superiors around him; but he finds a protector in none of them. Hence his feelings towards the wealthy and noble are apt to be characterized by sullen dislike, or by a mean servility. As for sympathy, he may look for that to the spinning jenny and the cotton bale, and let his affections grow to them if they can.

The world will behold in due time the disruption of that vast organization of labor by which the ruling class in Great Britain have concentrated the energies of the empire, and directed the same for so many years to the extension of British power and dominion, which was but a generalized mode of aggrandizing themselves. That system has answered great purposes, has accomplished great results. But it has generated in its progress a mass of social and political evil which now clogs its working, and is gradually impairing its inmost springs of action. Civilization is expanding beyond the narrow basis of a class government. Humanity cries aloud in the name of her millions. Men are something more than machines. The object of human existence is not merely to gain, by incessant toil, the means of subsistence, that the ability to toil on may be maintained. The mass of mankind were never designed to be the drudges of a few, and to rest in that position, as the highest attainment for them. The progress of freedom is but the progress of individual development; its results are the results of individual activity, extended more and more to the integers of society. Men have found that power, in whatever depository lodged, has been used by rulers in forgetfulness of its true uses, in forgetfulness of the general good, in a blind persuasion that it was theirs by an inherent right, to be employed for their aggrandizement or pleasure. Thus the Priesthood first, as the agents of heaven,[Pg 21] and holding intercourse with the celestial powers; then the monarch, as the personal representative of Deity; next the highest order of men in the State, ὁι αριστοι, as possessing the combined wisdom of the wisest; all these have held the supreme power in succession, in the progress of freedom, and all have perverted the functions of government. Instead of shepherds, guarding well the flock, they have been as hirelings, fleecing the flock. The assumption of sovereign power by the general body of the people, is the result of continued disappointments—of continued failures to find a depository where sovereignty might be safely deposited and righteously and wisely administered.

It will not do for the rulers of nations nor for the masters of slaves to regard themselves as the holders of power for their own purposes merely—but as the holders of a trust which they are to discharge with fidelity, and which they are to give up, when their agency as the administrators of authority is no longer productive of good.

V. Of Slavery in Maryland.

It is known that Slavery once existed in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and the New England States. It has been abolished in those States, while it continues to exist in Maryland, and in the States south of the Potomac and the Ohio.

The disappearance of Slavery from certain States, and its continuance in others, constitute a notable point of observation. Why has it happened that Pennsylvania discarded an institution which South Carolina cherishes? Is the question one of morality or of political economy?

If slave labor had proved, upon the whole, profitable in Pennsylvania, is it likely that Slavery would have been abolished in that State? Let the same question be asked of New Jersey, New York, and New England.

There was a beginning of the system in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. How happened it that the germ of an institution, planted about the same time in all the colonies, took root and increased in some[Pg 22] of them only, while in others it did not grow? It could not have been from the superior morality of the northern people—because at that time there was no question about the morality of the thing at all. Scruples against the right to hold slaves were not entertained then; nor was the slave trade regarded as an unrighteous traffic.

The operation of causes similar to those which produced emancipation at the north, will bring about the abolition of Slavery in Maryland. Let us now consider this point.

If Slavery be regarded as a matter of political economy, it will be found, as when viewed in the light of a social relation, to require conditions and circumstances, in order to its vindication. It is only when the soil is uncommonly prolific, and calls for no great degree of skill in the cultivation; or when the productions are so valuable as to allow of large deductions for waste and bad management, that Slavery can be said to pay for its own subsistence.

In the long run, Slavery is always unprofitable. It can be applied only to one sort of labor—agriculture; and to that in its simplest forms. Its tendency is to exhaust the soil without providing for its resuscitation; because wherever Slavery is, there labor is regarded as drudgery, and the intelligence of the community, which resides with the masters, is not directed towards labor. Hence there are no improvements in the modes of labor; no well regulated system of economy; no foresight. The masters want to enjoy at once the proceeds of their plantations, for their business is mainly to enjoy; they live for the present; they leave all concerns of industry to their overseers, who are not likely to carry out systematic plans for the improvement of lands, when the owners of the estates are regardless of such things, and would not be disposed to forego immediate profits for the future benefit of such improvements. A thoughtful industry will wait some years for the fruition of its hopes, stinting itself in the meantime. It will vest in the soil the profits of the year, looking to be repaid abundantly hereafter.[Pg 23] But with a system of Slavery these things can not be expected.

As a general remark, then, it may be observed that whenever from circumstances of soil, climate, and production, there is need of economy, skill, and careful industry in the cultivation of the ground; wherever nature, not yielding her fruits to indolent hands, has to be overcome by sturdy efforts, by labor directed by intelligence and aided at every turn by the appliances of art which inventive genius has discovered and adapted to use—there Slavery can not permanently exist, because it is incompatible with such conditions.

In this view it may be seen how it has happened that Slavery, once adopted in the northern States, failed to flourish there—how it was cast out as an uncongenial element. In this same view it may be seen also that Slavery must, by and by, cease to exist in Maryland. It has brought sterility already upon whole districts; it rests like a paralysing spell upon the enterprise and the active energies of the commonwealth. Of this, more as we proceed.

In the sugar and cotton growing States the products of the soil are so rich and abundant, that Slavery can exist in spite of the slovenly and wasteful manner in which its agency is employed. Yet even under these circumstances its profits are for the most part fallacious. No portion of the United States suffered so severely under the commercial revulsion of 1837 as the cotton and sugar growing region. The statistics of bankruptcies in Jamaica, as exhibited in reports to Parliament from time to time, show the same fact.

Again, the use of slave labor is deemed essential in hot climates. The productiveness of the British West India Islands certainly was impaired by the abolition of Slavery; nor can it be disguised that the British government is now attempting to substitute another species of Slavery, or Slavery under another name, in place of that which was abolished. If the emancipated slaves had shown a willingness to work; if they had been sufficiently advanced to appreciate freedom so far as to know[Pg 24] that in their own industry lay the real elements of independence—the result of the Emancipation Act of the British Parliament would have been different from what it has thus far appeared to be. There would have been laborers enough; but laborers of such a sort that the white proprietors, a handful in the general population, would have been supplanted—and that ere now. The energy which would have impelled the Jamaica negroes to work of their own accord; the spirit which would have sustained them; if that energy and spirit had existed; would have made them masters of the island.

But in the West Indies the blacks, for the most part, are scarcely one grade beyond the natives in Africa. They are not so transfused throughout a white population as our negroes are; they live in gangs or communities to themselves, where they speak a gibberish dialect, and retain their native superstitions. They are a far inferior race to the colored people of the United States. Of course they would not work when compulsion ceased; their highest ideas of freedom included nothing more precious than the privilege of being idle. And it is very well for the existing generation of whites in those islands, that the emancipated mass preferred torpid repose to activity.

At present the planters of Jamaica are obtaining laborers from Africa, under the name of emigrants, who, by a pleasant fiction, are entered as volunteers in the fields. The British cruisers, when they capture a slaver at sea, send the cargo to the West Indies, and thus benefit the plantations, at the expense of the slave captain and owners—the latter suffering confiscation, and the former running the risk of being hanged. So, certain of the eagle tribe, disdaining to fish, sit on a high tree or rock and watch the fishing hawk; and when the latter secures his prey in his talons and is rising with it, the eagle darts forth from his eminence and pounces upon the spoil, which he appropriates without further ceremony to the use of his own nest.

Nevertheless, it is not my purpose to dwell on this point of the adaptation of slave labor to hot climates.[Pg 25] We may safely leave it to time and to the progress of the age to determine that matter as it ought to be determined. It is Slavery in Maryland which we are considering; and in Maryland the heat of the climate can not be taken into the account at all, as disqualifying free labor. The States farther south have their own responsibilities on the subject of Slavery. They will know of themselves when the system becomes productive of evil to such an extent as to call for its removal. It is not for us to judge for them, to judge them. Let each State act for itself and act only when its judgment and sense of duty dictate.

For years past our cotton growing States have been exporting their soil; and with that improvidence which Slavery generates, that love of present indulgence, careless of what may follow, the south has received in return the means of enjoyment only—nothing wherewith to renovate the outraged ground. Such a process long continued must, in the end, ruin the finest lands in the world. Its effects are apparent in the Atlantic States of the south, which are losing their population, the attraction of the new and rich lands in the south-west operating irresistibly to draw the planters of Carolina and Georgia from their worn out fields.

The same general observations will apply to our slaveholding sections in Maryland, and to many parts of eastern Virginia too, if it were necessary to pursue the investigation there. Emigration to the west has kept pace with the impoverishment of our lands. Large tracts have come into the hands of a few proprietors—too large to be improved, and too much exhausted to be productive. But this is not the worst. The traveller, as he journeys through these districts, smitten with premature barrenness as with a curse, beholds fields, once enclosed and subject to tillage, now abandoned and waste, and covered with straggling pines or scrubby thickets, which are fast overgrowing the waning vestiges of former cultivation. From swamps and undrained morasses, malaria exhales, and like a pestilence infects the country. The inhabitants become a sallow race; the current of[Pg 26] life stagnates; energy fails; the spirits droop. Over the whole region a melancholy aspect broods. There are every where signs of dilapidation, from the mansion of the planter with its windows half-glazed, its doors half-hinged, its lawn trampled by domestic animals that have ingress and egress through the broken enclosures, to the ragged roadside house where thriftless poverty finds its abode. No neat cottages with gardens and flowers giving life to the landscape; no beautiful villages where cultivated taste blends with rustic simplicity, enriching and beautifying; no flourishing towns, alive with the bustle of industry—none of those are seen; no, nor any diversified succession of well cultivated farms with their substantial homesteads and capacious barns; no well-constructed bridges, no well-conditioned roads. Neglect, the harbinger of decay, has stamped her impress every where. Slavery, bringing with it from its African home its characteristic accompaniments, seems to have breathed over its resting places here the same desolating breath which made Sahara a desert.

No one who has passed from a region of free labor to a slaveholding district can have failed to notice the contrast presented by the change.

I have been here speaking of those portions of the country where slavery has existed for a long time, and where it has formed the prominent feature. In some sections the natural fertility of the soil withstands for many years the deteriorating influence of slave culture; in other quarters, the number of slaves being small, the effects of slavery do not become prominently characteristic.

Grain growing districts, countries where a scientific agriculture prevails, where the mind of man as well as the hands of labor, finds employment in the culture of the ground, the rearing of trees, the improvement of breeds of cattle, horses, and swine, the refining of the texture of wool, the care of the dairy—those rural districts, where Nature, repaying the manifold appliances of judicious care, tasks her powers of production and puts on her loveliest forms of beauty, as though grateful to man for[Pg 27] his attention, and seeking communion with his better spirit—there Slavery can not dwell. It is not congenial with such scenes.

Nor, again, can Slavery find a congenial abode in those beautiful undulating regions of green hills and swiftly flowing streams which afford such conveniences for the arts. In those regions nature invites the co-operation of intelligent man; she offers her powers to turn the wheels of his complicated machinery. The rude hands of servile labor are not adapted to take advantage of such proffers.

What are all the arts of civilized life, but so many results of man’s conquests over material things? The active mind, the inventive intellect, in alliance with its minister, the fashioning hand, never ceases in its efforts, as it comes in contact with the things of nature, to turn them to its purposes. The laws of nature are studied that man may act in unison with them, and through them gain the mastery. But where Slavery forms the hand of the community, the working instrument, how is it possible that intelligence should animate it to give it dexterity, delicacy of touch, variety of powers? No, it is not possible. The informing principle, the vital force of a perceptive mind, quickened by its own impulses, can not descend into the form of Slavery to animate and direct it. There may be great intelligence in a slaveholding community; but it is not in the working members thereof. Thus the mind of the South, devoted to political affairs, is shrewd, active, and powerful, and maintains an ascendency in the republic, far beyond the physical weight and resources of that section of the union. The south has given to the United States seven out of the ten Presidents who have sat at the head of our public affairs. But the mind of the south can not approach nature to deal with it, to overcome it. It has not the appliances, the practical instrumentality. Its head is clear; but its hand is paralytic. If its working agency were endowed with an inherent intelligence and a self-directing will, the necessary accompaniments of an inventive genius, it would be servile no longer.

The south, then, must be content, so long as it retains Slavery, with the simplest modes of labor; it must expect to have every thing done in a clumsy, slovenly manner. It may grow cotton and sugar, while fertility remains to its soil; but it will be dependent on the north for the most ordinary implements of husbandry, from a cotton gin to a hoe, a spade, or sugar ladle. Let us here quote the language of a southern man:

“My recent visit to the northern states has fully satisfied me that the true secret of our difficulties lies in the want of energy on the part of our capitalists, and ignorance and laziness on the part of those who ought to labor. We need never look for thrift while we permit our immense timber forests, granite quarries and mines, to lie idle, and supply ourselves with hewn granite, pine boards, laths, and shingles, &c., furnished by the lazy dogs at the north—ah, worse than this, we see our back country farmers, many of whom are too lazy to mend a broken gate, or repair the fences, to protect their crops from the neighboring stock, actually supplied with their axe, hoe, and broom handles, pitchforks, rakes, &c., by the indolent mountaineers of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The time was when every old woman in the country had her gourd, from which the country gardens were supplied with seeds. We now find it more convenient to permit this duty to devolve on our careful friends, the Yankees. Even our boat-oars, and handspikes for rolling logs, are furnished, ready made, to our hands, and what jimcrack can possibly be invented of which we are not the purchasers? These are the drains which are impoverishing the south—these are the true sources of all our difficulties. Need I add, further to exemplify our excessive indolence, that the Charleston market is supplied with fish and wild game by northern men, who come out here as regularly as the winter comes for this purpose, and, from our own waters and forests, often realize, in the course of one winter, a sufficiency to purchase a small farm in New England?”

The newspapers tell us from time to time of the establishment of manufacturing works in the south. In the[Pg 29] western portions of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, where the country is hilly and water power abundant, cotton factories are beginning to spring up. Men of enterprise from the north go thither and embark in these undertakings, which are said, for the most part, to promise well. In many places in Virginia, manufactures have taken root firmly. In proportion as this movement goes on and prospers, in such proportion will Slavery recede; in such proportion will its hold at the south be loosened.

For let it be remembered that the blending of the mind of the community, with the labor of the community, implies necessarily freedom, to the extent of such combination.

Look at the diversified forms in which the mind of the north finds development: behold its manifold workings. What exhibitions of ingenuity! What variety of invention! What astonishing results! Lowell and Patterson and Pittsburg, each a living trophy of the achievements of man over the powers of nature, or rather of his achievements in alliance with the powers of nature. Yet what are these three illustrations? The number of such is innumerable. Look at the whole state of Ohio, the growing, gigantic embodiment of practical, intellectual energy applied to the arts of industry.

Nor can any limits be assigned to this progression, nor any restrictions be put upon the variety of its developments. The whole world of material things lies subject to the controlling hand of man, when his inquiring mind has discovered the laws of nature; and what can hold back the free spirit from its incessant investigations?

But in a slaveholding community there is no such progression, no such variety. The mind of the community is directed to other things than labor; nay, labor falls into contempt and is looked upon as derogatory; for it is servile to labor. How can society, under such circumstances, advance in the practical arts? Its industry is confined to one pursuit, and in that there can be no excellence attained, because slave labor is not imbued with intelligence. Evidently, such a social state can not be[Pg 30] fitted for permanence; it is not in harmony with the laws of social existence and progress. Things can not be in a wholesome condition where it is discreditable to work, since with labor is conjoined every valuable attainment, including soundness of mind and body.

It must doubtless, sooner or later, come to pass that the soil of the Atlantic cotton growing States, worn out by servile culture, will be unable to sustain Slavery by the side of the competition of the rich alluvial lands of the south western portions of the Mississippi valley. Georgia and the Carolinas, not to mention Virginia, where Slavery must cease at an earlier date than in the more southern States, will find it necessary to fall upon some other occupation besides cotton growing. They must cultivate the vine, breed silk worms, rear the olive, turn to account their manufacturing facilities—these, or other such things, the inhabitants there must do if they would save the land from depopulation.

There is but one element in the agriculture of Maryland to which Slavery is attached with any affinity; and that is the Tobacco culture. Nor is this affinity of a very binding nature. Tobacco can be grown very successfully by free labor, as the statistics of Ohio demonstrate. One result of the abolition of Slavery in this particular, would be the subdivision of large plantations into small farms.

The system of cultivation would improve under this arrangement, and the product would be increased. I presume it would be no exaggerated calculation to estimate that the tobacco crop of Prince George’s county, under a system of small farms and free labor, would be of twice its present annual value ten years hence. The enhanced value of the land would be in about the same proportion.

If the foregoing considerations afford any illustration of the reasons why Slavery did not continue to exist in the States north of Maryland, a brief examination of statistics, to say nothing of other things, will show that the system can not continue much longer to exist in Maryland. I ask attention to the remarkable[Pg 31] facts exhibited by the census records of our State since 1790.[2]

In nine counties in Maryland the white population has diminished since 1790. These are the counties: Montgomery, Prince George, St. Mary’s, Calvert, Charles, Kent, Caroline, Talbot and Queen Anne’s. The aggregate white population of those counties in 1790 was 73,352; in 1840 it was 54,408. Here is a falling off of nearly 20,000; if the account were carried to the present year the falling off would be more than 20,000.

These nine counties include the chief slaveholding sections of the State. In five of them taken together, viz., Montgomery, Prince George, St. Mary’s, Calvert, and Charles, the number of slaves exceeds that of the white population. These are chiefly the tobacco growing counties, together with the county of Frederick.

The counties of Allegany, Washington, Frederick and Baltimore and Baltimore City are the portions of the State in which Slavery has existed but partially. That is to say, Allegany, with an aggregate population of 15,704, has but 811 slaves; Washington, in a population of 28,862, has 2,505 slaves; Frederick has 6,370 slaves to a population of 36,703; Baltimore county, 6,533 slaves in an aggregate population of 80,256; and Baltimore city includes but 3,212 slaves in its population of 102,513.

Now taking these four counties and Baltimore city out of the account, it will be found that the aggregate white population of the rest of the State has diminished since 1790. In other words the increase of our population, which is about one hundred and fifty thousand since the first census, has been mainly in those counties where Slavery has been least prominent. In those portions of the State where Slavery prevails most prominently the white population, during the last fifty years, has diminished.

Another remarkable result exhibited by the census statistics of Maryland since 1790, is the increase of the[Pg 32] free colored population, in contrast with the diminution of slaves. The slave population of our State amounted in 1790 to 103,036; in 1810 it reached 111,502, its maximum. Since 1810 it has fallen to 89,619. The free colored population on the other hand, which in 1790 was only 8,043, has increased to 61,093. In a few years it must exceed the slave population, for the one is increasing while the other decreases—a double process which must soon annihilate the difference of some twenty-five thousand.

The number of manumissions reported to the commissioners of the State Colonization Fund from 1831 to 1845, under the act of the former year, was 2,988. This shows an average of some two hundred and more annually. I am not sure that this number exhibits all the manumissions. It is enough, however, to show the tendency of things. With all the restrictions which legislation has imposed upon manumissions they still go on. It may be taken for certain that they will go on; that nothing can stop them. Year after year the scruples of slaveholders in some parts of the State prompt to manumission. The death beds of many afford the occasions for giving these scruples force. It is useless to reason about a thing of this sort. Emancipation in Maryland must go on. In my humble judgment it is going on too fast—and for the simple reason that we are not making adequate preparation for the new condition of things which must ensue.

The contrast presented by the progress of the free States, within fifty years, and by that of the slaveholding States for the same period, is so familiar that it would be useless to burden these pages with statistics to illustrate it. It may be sufficient to state, in respect to the increase of population, that in 1790 the free States, including Massachusetts and Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had a population of 1,971,455; while the slaveholding States, Delaware, Maryland, with the District, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, contained 1,852,494 inhabitants. In 1840[Pg 33] the same free States numbered a population of 6,761,082, and the same slaveholding States had an entire population of 3,827,110. The former increased in a ratio more than double as compared with the latter.

In our own State, however, where we do not grow cotton, sugar, or rice, and where there are no new lands to present a fresh soil to the plough, and to invite settlers from a distance, the increase of population in our chief slaveholding counties has been nothing at all. There has been a decrease, and a very marked one. How has this decrease happened but by a process similar to that which rendered desolate three hundred thousand acres in the champagne of Naples, in the days of Slavery among the Romans—which made Italy itself almost one wilderness, reinhabited by wild boars and other animals, before a single barbarian had crossed the Alps!

Let us not conceal the truth from ourselves. Slavery in Maryland is no longer compatible with progress; it is a dead weight and worse; it has become a wasting disease, weakening the vital powers—a leprous distilment into the life blood of the commonwealth. Yet we will have no quacks to prescribe for our malady. It is only necessary that we should become aware of our true condition; there are restorative energies in abundance, rightly directed, to retrieve the State from every disorder to which she is subject.

VII. Emancipation in Maryland: its difficulties.

If we are driven to the conclusion that Slavery in Maryland must terminate, under the operation of tendencies now at work, it becomes a matter of great importance to know something about the manner in which so extensive a change is to be accomplished. Undoubtedly it will not do to remain entirely passive on this subject. I am persuaded that the general sentiment in Maryland is fixed in the conviction that Slavery, here at least, is an evil, and that in some way or other it must be removed.

In the first place the negroes amongst us, whether emancipated or enslaved, must remain a distinct class, a servile class, separated from the whites by differences of color, race and civilization.

In considering Slavery where such bars of separation between the classes are not found, one may very well imagine how the system may be changed without confusion or disorder; how the enslaved class, gradually admitted to the privileges of freedom, may, after a while, become incorporated with the general body of society; how, thus, all distinctions may be finally destroyed, and how the power, resources, and energy of the State may be vastly increased by the addition of so much active material to her industrial and moral forces. In Rome the sons of freedmen were citizens. Europe could alter her system of Slavery which existed in the middle ages, and which still exists in Poland, Hungary and Russia; she could admit her serfs to some of the rights of citizens, though still withholding many of those rights; she could do this without danger, because serfs and lords were of one complexion, and of one race. The descendant of a peasant might himself in time become a lord.

But when a servile population, emancipated, stands marked by its peculiarities of race and color, so that it can not be drawn into the social and political sphere, its position inevitably becomes hostile. In the midst of the community, but not of it; the old bond of connection ruptured, with no basis whatever upon which a new one can be established—what but feelings of suspicion, of distrust, of aversion and repugnance can prevail between the two classes so far removed and so entirely dissimilar.

Nor can any thing be done by the superior class to elevate the condition of the other; because that would be to strengthen an adverse power. All efforts to improve an humble population must have reference to their ultimate admission to a participation in social and political[Pg 35] rights. Of course this could not be contemplated for a moment in any community where the number of the black population might be at all considerable. And this brings me, without dwelling farther on this point, to the second difficulty which has to be considered by us in Maryland, in view of future emancipation.

When it was determined to abolish Slavery in Pennsylvania, the thing could be done easily enough, because of the small number of slaves in that commonwealth, in comparison with the bulk of the population. The slaves were a mere handful. They could be set free in the midst of the general community without the danger of their forming a large class remaining distinct from the rest of the population, to infect society by their idleness, or to excite commotion by the rivalry of their labor with that of the whites. It made no great difference in the social condition of Pennsylvania, whether the negroes within her borders were individually slaves or not. Their numbers were too small to affect the general current of things one way or another.

But in Maryland the case is otherwise. It would be a serious business to set free as large a slave population as we have, and leave them floating among us with a careless disregard of the future. The black population of Maryland is about one third of the whole population. In 1840 it amounted to 151,556; the white population numbered 316,011. In an aggregate population, then, of 467,567 the blacks number 151,556. Of these the slaves are about ninety thousand; the free blacks, about sixty thousand.

The question, it may be said, relates not to the aggregate number of the black population, but only to the slave portion. Sixty thousand and more are free already; emancipation would affect only the ninety thousand.

The latter number would be sufficient to make it a serious business. But in fact the matter relates to the whole number. For emancipation would make them all of one class as they are now of one race—would add the ninety thousand to the sixty thousand and upwards, constituting altogether a vast heterogeneous element in[Pg 36] the social sphere which could not be assimilated, and which would be too great to remain unassimilated without great disorder.

No; the moment the interests of this race are disintegrated from those of the whites, the two will come into collision, and the weaker must be sacrificed. The only safety of the black is in the swallowing up of his personality—the merging of himself and his being, in the overpowering existence of the master race.

Why will not those who call themselves the friends of the black people think of this?

The ninety thousand slaves of Maryland have now protectors; these slaves constitute part and parcel of a great interest which their masters represent. Set them free, and where will they find protectors? They will not be able to protect themselves; for their freedom would give them no participation in the political franchise—nor would such participation avail them if it were given.

In the competition which arises now between slave labor and free white labor in our slaveholding counties, the latter is obliged to give way—because the slave and the master are of one interest, and that the predominant interest. The laboring white man removes; or, if he remains, he succumbs to the overpowering force, and, though conscious of the degradation, he submits to it.

But if the slave is separated from the master and left to stand alone, then is he not only deprived of the support which upheld him, but the very power which protected is now turned against him; the stamp of his race is upon him; he is isolated. Cut off from the sympathies of the whites, without any part or lot in the political life of the State, forming no part of the frame work of society, he is like a parasite plant torn from the stock to which it clung. The slaveholding interest is no more; where is the slave-protecting interest to spring up?

The competition between white labor and that of the blacks, Slavery being abolished, would now assume a new appearance. The negroes would have none to befriend them; every white laborer, actually or prospectively[Pg 37] a voter, would bring with him into the competition the whole force of his connection with the social and political system. Apart from this, the value of white labor would be greater than that of negro labor, in almost any pursuit. The conflict of this competition might be dangerous to domestic peace; it might prove suddenly destructive to the race which sooner or later it would inevitably overwhelm.

The danger of disturbances of tranquillity would arise from the large mass of the black population amongst us. In the northern States the negroes are too few to come into competition with the whites; yet even in those States a hostile feeling is indulged towards them. Witness the outbreaks in Philadelphia and Cincinnati a few years ago. Here in Maryland the collision between the two classes of laborers would be more violent than any which has yet taken place elsewhere. The influx of foreign laborers, German and Irish, with their superior efficiency, would add continually to the force pressing upon the negroes. Recollect that the latter form nearly one-third of our population; and then consider the probable fate of that multitude of defenceless beings, aliens in the community, with an active enemy bent on rooting them out, no sympathies in their favor, no interest to support them, but with every prejudice of society turned against them.

Again, passing by these certain provocations of disturbance, the presence of so large a body of free negroes in the State would render necessary a series of restrictive laws. At this time our legislation is thought to be very severe towards the free colored people. It is painful to contemplate the extremes to which our police severities might be obliged to go in the event of an act of emancipation.

I have used the term “free negroes,” to distinguish the emancipated blacks from the slaves. But the distinction is scarcely worth a difference so far as servitude is concerned. The emancipated negro can not emerge from a servile condition; it is impossible that he should do so in this country, while the distinctions of race and[Pg 38] color remain. If Slavery were abolished in Maryland, the negroes amongst us would be slaves to the social system, instead of slaves to individuals; the restrictions of the laws would be more hard than the control of a master.

In view, then, of the real facts of our position, as it relates to our black people, what ought to be our chief concern? To hasten emancipation? No: that will come at any rate; it may come too soon. The main thing is to see how we can provide for it so that the new relations it will bring may be productive of good and not of evil to both races.

This, then, is the great matter; the public mind should be turned to it seriously and at once. Maryland has no precedent to follow. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, New England had none of her difficulties. They could emancipate and leave results to take care of themselves; or they might have refrained from emancipation with pretty nearly equal indifference. No strong, deeply rooted slaveholding interest could ever have grown up in those States; for the same reasons which prevent any such from fastening itself upon western Maryland and western Virginia. Slavery never could have become ingrained in the fibre and texture of the communities north of us, as it has grown into ours. Hence while the putting of it off by them was a mere rejection of something uncongenial with the system, it will be with us a serious alterative process to root out a constitutional malady which has crept into the blood, and blended itself with the very springs of life.

If we should rush precipitately upon emancipation, and rest with that as though it were every thing—let us see what would come of that. One hundred and fifty thousand black people, deprived of the guardianship and control of masters, the bonds of domestic relationship which united them with the community being rent asunder, and that identity of interest gone which secured them a definite and harmonious, though humble sphere in the social organism—shall they be left to the mercy of stringent laws and police restrictions, and have the life worried out of them by the incessant fretting of[Pg 39] petty persecutions? Poor unfortunates, thrust forth out of the pale of communion to maintain a separate existence, with no foundation to rest it upon, with no element of social or political life wherewith to nourish it, with nothing to cling to, nothing to be engrafted upon, an existence without entity, miserable, forlorn, who could be so unfeeling as not to commiserate their condition! Nor would it be the slowly wasting process of petty persecutions which they would have alone to encounter. Day by day the pressure of competition would become more and more grievous, driving them from every avocation in which they could hope to find employment. Forced from the city into the country, they would be compelled to seek refuge from the country in the obscure alleys of the city. I have alluded to the riots in Cincinnati and Philadelphia a few years ago, the causes of which are too well known. In the city of New York, if my information is correct, negroes are excluded from cab driving and similar occupations. If such things are seen in communities where the number of blacks is comparatively small, what might not be expected in a community where the blacks are so numerous as they are in ours?

It may be here remarked that so long as Slavery remains a prominent institution in a State, its influence upon labor, and upon the estimation in which labor is held, has the effect of protecting the class of free negroes to a considerable extent from the competition, and its results, of white labor. The slaveholding interest is the bulwark of the whole colored race; it stands between them and destruction. Here in Baltimore there are no ordinances excluding free negroes from particular occupations. The competition of white labor, however, mostly Irish and German, has driven the free negroes from many sorts of employment on Fell’s Point, especially from the wharves and coal yards. If Slavery were abolished and the slaveholding interest extinct, the whole force of an irresistible competition would come directly upon the colored people, and would overwhelm them utterly. When we are considering emancipation, therefore, we must consider[Pg 40] other things also, if we would be mindful of our duty as having in charge a docile inoffensive class, whose fate depends so much upon our conduct towards them.

One other thing remains to be here mentioned before we pass to the next and last division of the subject. In the event of emancipation, if we trust to the action of our domestic policy to drive the black population into other parts of the Union, it must be borne in mind that the reactive policy of our neighbor States, both north and south, will be immediately operative to repel the influx of blacks, likely to be poured upon them from Maryland. Can it be supposed that Pennsylvania will open her arms to receive the exiles rejected from our bosom? Ohio has already raised the barrier of exclusion as against Kentucky. The slaveholding States will not take our expelled negroes. We could not expect that; for Maryland at this moment will not take the free negroes of any other State.

Our condition, then, will be one of isolation, to such a degree, at least, as to throw us wholly upon our own energies. In other words, if we emancipate we must not expect to slough off the results upon other States. We must confront them ourselves; we must meet them on our own soil, and manage them as best we may. It is probable, however, that an act of prospective emancipation would induce some slaveholders to emigrate with their slaves to the south-west; and in this way there would be some diminution of the mass of the colored population.

VIII. Colonization.

The law of 1831 which recognised Colonization as a part of the public policy of Maryland was a compromise, though generally not so regarded now, between the emancipation tendency then operative and the slaveholding interest. The fanatical movement of the abolitionists checked the progress of things here; all sides, all parties, all tendencies were united to rebuke the insolent demonstrations of that fanaticism.

Colonization proposes to convey to the western coast of Africa, and to establish there, on territory procured for the purpose, the free colored people of Maryland, with their own consent. To carry out this design the Legislature of Maryland, in 1831 appropriated ten thousand dollars annually for twenty years, and constituted the Maryland State Colonization Society the agent in the business. Three Managers of the fund are appointed by the State, to act in concert with the Colonization Board. Neither the managers nor the members of the board receive any compensation; yet no enterprise was ever prosecuted with more energy, prudence, and success.

It is not necessary that I should go into details here to show what colonization has achieved under the auspices of the Maryland board. The people of Maryland are familiar with this subject. The Colonization Journal, published semi-monthly in Baltimore, under the charge of Dr. James Hall, the board’s general agent, makes known to the public all the particulars connected with colonization, and the affairs of the settlement in Africa. It may be sufficient at present to say that a most propitious fortune seems to have accompanied every step of this great undertaking. The colony was planted by some thirty or forty emigrants; it now has a population of more than seven hundred. It is an organized community; in its form, constitution and laws it is a republic; the governor, appointed by the State board, is a colored man; the other officers, elected by the people or appointed by the Executive, are all colored men. The little commonwealth is prosperous; it has established its influence over the neighboring tribes; and recently Gov. Russwurm procured by purchase a considerable and very important territory, lying adjacent to Cape Palmas. The colony has its schools, its houses of worship, its military organization, its tribunal of justice, its officers of police, its administrative functionaries. Roads have been opened into the interior, and a trade is carried on in rice, camwood, palm oil, and other productions of the country. The language of an eye witness[Pg 42] will best testify to the condition of affairs in our Maryland colony: I quote the Rev. John Seyes, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, long a resident at the old colony of Monrovia, and recently a visiter at Cape Palmas:

“I consider the colony of Maryland in Liberia, known as the one receiving the exclusive patronage of the Maryland State Colonization Society of the United States, as decidedly one of the most prosperous of the American settlements on the western coast of Africa. It could not have been otherwise. The organization and continued energetic labors of the board representing the society, would lead us to expect nothing less. Soon after the colony was founded by Dr. James Hall, now the society’s general agent in Baltimore, and the machinery of a colonial government set in motion, the selection of a colored man as governor was made. This was just as it should be. It was called an experiment, but it was one of the success of which no reasonable fears could be entertained. From the commencement, the colony has been progressing, if not rapidly, yet steadily and onwardly. The population is now about seven hundred, and they receive an immigration every year. All necessary preparation is made for the reception of an expedition before its arrival. There is a public asylum or receptacle, consisting of a number of separate rooms, and situated in a healthful part of the colony, into which the new-comers are generally acclimated. Meantime frame buildings are being erected on lots laid out for them, of suitable size to afford them a good garden spot, and by the time the immigrant is through the fever and can begin to take care of himself, he has a home to go into—a dry, comfortable little framed and shingled house, where he can have all the necessaries and comforts of life, if he will only follow up his first advantages with economy and industry.

“It is a notorious fact that there is not a single family, of all the colonists in Maryland in Liberia, occupying a thatched house; all have buildings such as I have described. Let it be understood that there is another point of sound[Pg 43] and wise policy in this arrangement of incalculable advantage to the settler. His house is not given to him; by no means. He would not value it as much if it were. He is charged with all the expenses of its erection. When he is able, he is furnished with work, work is found him by some means, and as he earns his wages, he receives a part to live on, and a reasonable proportion is stopped in the hands of the society’s agent to pay the debt due for the house. As I am not writing a treatise on colonization, reader, I can not stop here to notice one tithe of the many points of superiority which this plan possesses over others which have been in vogue in other places. But that it works well, one must go to Palmas, visit the people as I did, go to their homes, eat and drink with them, inquire into their condition, find out their contentedness, without seeming to intend any such thing, and then he will be satisfied.”

There is no instance of colonization, that I know of, which has proved more successful in every respect than this. The history of the settlement of our own country shows no parallel to it—especially when we consider the materials with which colonization in Africa had to work. Yet the colonists, humble indeed, and unaccustomed to self-government, have acquired from their residence with an Anglo-Saxon race so much of the rudiments, forms, and habits of a self-governing people, that, when thrown upon their own exertions, they have exhibited qualities of patience, endurance and good sense, which give assurance of their capacity to do well in their new abode. Removed, moreover, from their position of inferiority, and possessed with a true spirit of freedom and with a feeling of self-respect thence arising, they behold themselves men, with the power of rising to the highest stature of humanity. This, in itself, is a great thing; it is the chief thing. A people who can entertain such feelings and ideas have their destiny sure and a noble one.

With the State’s annual appropriation of ten thousand dollars, and the contributions of individuals, the board has carried on the operations incident to colonization.[Pg 44] The debts contracted by the outlays necessary for the beginning of the enterprise of founding a new commonwealth, and of sustaining it in its early days, have all been paid off. An annual expedition with emigrants sails from Baltimore to Cape Palmas. An enterprise is now on foot, with every prospect of success, to start a packet vessel to run regularly between this city and Cape Palmas. A number of colored persons are engaged in this undertaking, and when its success is established, it will probably be surrendered entirely into their hands. The facilities for emigration will be much increased under this arrangement, by which a regular communication will be kept up with the colony. The trade between the two points, it is believed, will give abundant employment to a vessel of considerable tonnage.

Now, if we look merely at what colonization has done in the way of removing the colored population from Maryland, it would seem to be an utterly hopeless project. But let us see what colonization really proposes; and for this purpose I quote the language of Mr. Latrobe, under whose able superintendence, as President of the Colonization Board, the affairs of the colony have so wonderfully prospered:

“If colonization proposed by any probable means at its command, even with the most munificent assistance of Congress, State Legislatures and individuals, to remove the whole colored population of the United States to Africa, it would well deserve to be considered visionary, as idle indeed as to attempt to ladle Lake Erie dry. No means that could be obtained would be competent to this end. But the means, scant as they were, continued Mr. L., were ample to establish colonies on the coast of Africa, capable of self-support and self-government—moral and religious communities, where wealth and station would be offered to the colored man as the incentives and rewards for labor—colonies that would be as attractive to him as America is to the European. In 1832 the immigration to America was said to be upwards of two hundred thousand, more than double, nearly treble the annual increase of the entire colored population of the[Pg 45] Union. These immigrants, with few exceptions, came at their own expense. In point of means they were in no way superior to the corresponding class of free colored people in the United States—they came, because America presented attractions which their home did not. It is in the power of colonization to invest Africa with the same attractions for the colored immigrant, that America presents to the white one. Where the latter has one inducement to remove the former has ten. In Europe there are few avenues to worldly honor which are closed to those, who, nevertheless, leave them all behind. In America there are few, if any, avenues open to those for whom colonization labors.

“The object of colonization, therefore,” said Mr. Latrobe, “may be stated as the preparation of a home in Africa, for the free colored people of the State, to which they may remove when the advantages which it offers, and, above all, the pressure of irresistible circumstances in this country shall excite them to emigrate.”

Rightly understood then, as to its views and purposes, colonization may not be so impracticable a scheme after all. At any rate, whatever it does accomplish, is so much of good achieved, practical, permanent, substantial good. What the future may disclose to urge, nay, to compel, the separation of the two races now dwelling together in this country, no one can tell. But COLONIZATION looks with an anxious eye to such a future contingency, and in the meantime it will do all it can to prepare the way for the easy accomplishment of that consummation, if it should become inevitable.

It is the belief of some very intelligent persons that the black population of the United States will gradually move towards the south-west, along with the cotton culture, and be finally absorbed in the mixed races of Central America, and that thus Slavery will cease. Mr. Rives, of Virginia, advanced some such idea as this in the Senate of the United States, a year or so ago. But it seems clear to my mind that the white master will go as fast in that direction as the negro laborer, and wherever both are found together, one must be a slave. There is[Pg 46] no spot on this continent where the negro can be put so as to be removed from the domination of the white man; no remote spot which the negro will reach unless the white man carries him thither. The colored race in this country can never exert their energies in an independent way; they are and must be under the overshadowing influence of a controlling race.

What they may become in Africa, their native home, carrying with them to those shores, the vigorous elements imbibed during their apprenticeship of servitude here, other generations yet to come will know better than we of the present. The part which the African is to perform in the progress of civilization, and the development of the entire character of humanity, is a problem which has begun to attract the attention of enlightened men. Mr. Kinmont, whose discourses on the Natural History of Man show so large and comprehensive a mind, dwells with much interest upon the characteristics of the African race. A portion of his remarks, so beautiful, so humane, I can not but quote:

“It is certainly a remarkable fact that the negro family of the human species should have been naturally confined to the peninsula of Africa, and should never have travelled beyond it from voluntary choice. Philosophers have found a constitutional adaptation in this case to the climate and local circumstances of this their native and allotted home, and there can be no question that there is, and that when the epoch of their civilization arrives, in the lapse of ages, they will display in their native land some very peculiar and interesting traits of character, of which we, a distinct branch of the human family, can at present form no conception. It will be—indeed it must be—a civilization of a peculiar stamp; perhaps we might venture to conjecture, not so much distinguished by art as a certain beautiful nature, not so marked or adorned by science as exalted and refined by a certain new and lovely theology;—a reflection of the light of heaven more perfect and endearing than that which the intellects of the Caucasian race have ever yet exhibited. There is more of the child, of unsophisticated nature, in the[Pg 47] negro race than in the European, a circumstance, however, which must always lower them in the estimation of a people whose natural distinction is a manly and proud bearing, and an extreme proneness to artificial society, social institutions. The peculiar civilization which nature designs for each is obviously different, and they may impede, but never can promote the improvement of each other. It was a sad error of the white race, besides the moral guilt which was contracted, when they first dragged the African, contrary to his genius and inclination, from his native regions; a voluntary choice would never have led the negro into exile; the peninsula of Africa is his home, and the appropriate and destined seat of his future glory and civilization,—a civilization which, we need not fear to predict, will be as distinct in all its features from that of all other races, as his complexion and natural temperament and genius are different. But who can doubt that here also humanity, in its more advanced and millenial stage, will reflect, under a sweet and mellow light, the softer attributes of the divine beneficence? If the Caucasian race is destined, as would appear from the precocity of their genius and their natural quickness, and extreme aptitude to the arts, to reflect the lustre of the divine wisdom, or, to speak more properly, the divine science, shall we envy the negro, if a later but far nobler civilization await him,—to return the splendor of the divine attributes of mercy and benevolence in the practice and exhibition of all the milder and gentler virtues? It is true, the present rude lineaments of the race might seem to give little warrant for the indulgence of hopes so romantic; but yet those who will reflect upon the natural constitution of the African may see some ground even for such anticipations. Can we not read an aptitude for this species of civilization I refer to, in that singular light-heartedness which distinguishes the whole race,—in their natural want of solicitude about the future, in them a vice at present, but yet the natural basis of a virtue,—and especially in that natural talent for music with which they are pre-eminently endowed, to say nothing of their willingness to serve, the most beautiful[Pg 48] trait of humanity, which we, from our own innate love of dominion, and in defiance of the Christian religion, brand with the name of servility, and abuse not less to our own dishonor than their injury. But even amid these untoward circumstances there burst forth occasionally the indications of that better destiny, to which nature herself will at last conduct them, and from which they are at present withheld, not less by the mistaken kindness of their friends, than the injustice of their oppressors: for so jealous is nature of her freedom, that she repels all interference, even of the most benevolent kind, and will suffer only that peculiar good or intelligence to be elicited, of which she has herself deposited the seeds or rudiments in the human bosom.”

I have in another place alluded to the consideration that the residence of a portion of the negro race in this country may be, under the overruling dispensation of Providence, the means of great good to the whole race. It may be that the civilization of Africa will receive its first quickening elements by the return of her sons from a servitude which proved to them a school of useful acquirements. Some touch of Caucasian energy thus infused into the African mind may be the awakening impulse that shall arouse a whole people from the torpor of ages.

At all events, leaving these speculations, one thing is certain, viz. that Maryland is doing a good thing in promoting the work of colonization in Africa. She is providing a home for the bondsmen of her fields, where they may enjoy in reality the blessings of freedom which can never be their heritage here. To what extent soever this work is done, to such extent will positive good be done. We can not now foresee the circumstances which may, in time, give aspect and character to colonization; but of this we may be assured, that in proportion as the home of the emancipated African is more and more enlarged in Africa, and made more and more attractive, in such proportion will the way be opened for the deliverance of Maryland from one of her most serious embarrassments.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This subject of “Rights,” in connection with servitude, I have considered more fully in a little treatise entitled “Some Thoughts concerning Domestic Slavery,” published a few years ago.

[2] See Table, Appendix.

[Pg 49]

Letter III.

In the foregoing pages, my dear sir, I have endeavored to treat of Slavery in Maryland as it seemed to me the subject required. A matter so important should have a more full and thorough exposition; indeed, I am but poorly satisfied with this attempt at one. Yet it was my purpose to be brief, and, with that design, facts of statistics and details, not absolutely necessary, were omitted. To those who are willing to reflect, perhaps, the considerations here submitted, growing out of organic social and political laws, may be to some extent suggestive, so that their own minds may fill up the deficiencies of this imperfect outline.

I can not hope that by any thing here said the violence of fanaticism will be assuaged. The assumption of being better than other people is so full of exalted ideas, the delight of meddling in other people’s business is so fascinating, that those who have been once seized with the mania and have confirmed themselves in it, by the belief that they are discharging a duty to humanity in general, as chosen instruments, are in a bad way, and not likely to be cured. These are the extreme agitators who whirl about in the vortex of abstractions; sympathizers who would ruin the objects of their solicitude for a theory; reformers of Slavery in communities where it does not exist; martyrs who will embrace any thing rather than a stake. With these, and such as these, we of Maryland have nothing to do. They are lashing themselves into an insane fury about a thing which does not concern them, which they do not understand, which they can not touch without wounding us—for it is a domestic affair and relates to our hearths and household relations. For ourselves I have written on this subject, that it may be considered among ourselves, with a view to such rational action as may in due time be proper; and for our true friends at the north also and the friends of our black people, comprising the great mass of our[Pg 50] fellow citizens there, who do us the justice to believe that we have sense enough to find out our own condition, to appreciate it truly, and energy and humanity enough to do in the premises what duty may call for.

If I had been returned to the House of Delegates on the occasion to which you refer, my action in reference to Slavery in our State would have been confined simply to setting forth in a report, or some such way, the substance of the views contained in this pamphlet. It has been apparent for some time past that a convention to amend the State Constitution must assemble before long. That body, representing the primary sovereignty of the people, will be the most fit to take up the subject of Slavery. I have no doubt but it will take it up; and of one other thing I am equally certain, viz. that the clause in the constitution, which now makes Slavery perpetual in Maryland, will be stricken out. Most assuredly it will be stricken out, and that for ever.

With respect to the establishment of a newspaper in Baltimore, devoted to emancipation, I should think it, my dear sir, not advisable. The business in hand is of a kind to require calmness of consideration and of action. Now a newspaper, I fear, would be the instrument of agitation; it would find its pabulum in excitement. It would be regarded as the herald of abolition, and the whole body of ultra fanatics at the north would seek to connect themselves with the movement. Their contact would be deleterious in the highest degree; we wish not for their interference in any way; we prefer to manage our own domestic affairs; there can be no communion, in this matter, between our knowledge and their ignorance.

I leave the subject, my dear sir, for the present, and, with it, many things unsaid, which a full and complete discussion of such a topic would properly embrace. I might have referred to the effects of Slavery in connection with popular education and popular ignorance; but the statistics on that point are not just now at hand. It may be remarked, however, that no efficient free school system exists in any slaveholding State. Nor can it be otherwise; because where the land is held by slave[Pg 51] owners, and mostly in large plantations, the white population is too sparse to allow of compact school districts. Besides, the planters having the means of educating their own children, either at home or abroad, they are not likely to be much concerned about the education of the children of their poorer neighbors. In every point of view it will be found that the permanent continuance of negro Slavery is incompatible with the elevation of the humble classes of white citizens.

Again, the institution of Slavery might be regarded in its effects upon social manners and usages. And here we should find many prepossessions which are strong in the minds of all of us, and which grow out of the best and most amiable features of the institution we are considering. To say nothing of those relations of confidence and regard which have always marked the intercourse of the servants of our halls and fields with the gentlemen of Maryland, the exemption from labor which Slavery gave to the whole class of landholders, with wealth in the hands of many, and a fair competency to all, afforded the leisure and the means for social enjoyments to any extent which a gay and social disposition might prompt. Hence that frank and cordial intercourse among friends; that courteous urbanity to strangers; that generous hospitality of heart and home to all—which have become the characteristics of the south. Long may she retain them. She need lose no good quality attendant upon her connection with Slavery, when, the more primitive and simple days of that institution having passed away, the institution itself has become decrepit, inconsistent with the progress of the age, and prolific of evils.

At some future time, if an occasion should seem to call for it, I may resume the discussion of this subject. In matters, however, of serious reality, and felt to be such, there is generally not need of many words—provided those which are uttered are to the purpose. With assurances of high respect,

Population of the Counties of Maryland in 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820, 1830, and 1840, as shown by the census taken in those years.

CECIL.

KENT.

CAROLINE.

TALBOT.

QUEEN ANNE’S.

SOMERSET.

DORCHESTER.

WORCESTER.

ALLEGANY.

WASHINGTON.

FREDERICK.

BALTIMORE.

BALTIMORE CITY.

HARFORD.

MONTGOMERY.

PRINCE GEORGE’S.

SAINT MARY’S.

CALVERT.

CHARLES.

ANNE ARUNDEL.

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	3,407	163	10,055	13,625
1800	2,103	373	6,542	9,018
1810	2,467	947	9,652	13,066
1820	2,342	1,783	11,821	16,046
1830	1,705	2,249	11,478	15,432
1840	1,346	2,552	13,464	17,362

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	5,443	655	6,748	12,836
1800	4,474	1,786	5,511	11,771
1810	4,249	1,979	5,222	11,450
1820	4,071	2,067	5,315	11,453
1830	3,191	2,260	5,050	10,501
1840	2,741	2,586	5,513	10,840

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	2,057	421	7,028	9,506
1800	1,865	602	6,759	9,226
1810	1,520	1,001	6,932	9,453
1820	1,574	1,390	7,144	10,108
1830	1,171	1,652	6,247	9,070
1840	768	1,727	5,373	7,868

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	4,777	1,076	7,221	13,084
1800	4,775	1,591	7,070	13,436
1810	4,878	2,003	7,349	14,230
1820	4,769	2,234	7,386	14,389
1830	4,173	2,483	6,291	12,947
1840	3,698	2,336	6,069	12,103

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	6,674	618	8,171	15,463
1800	6,517	1,025	7,315	14,857
1810	6,381	2,738	7,529	16,648
1820	5,588	2,138	7,226	14,952
1830	4,872	2,866	6,559	14,397
1840	3,979	2,540	6,006	12,525

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	7,070	268	8,272	15,610
1800	7,432	586	9,340	17,358
1810	6,975	1,058	9,162	17,195
1820	7,241	1,952	10,386	19,579
1830	6,556	2,239	11,371	20,166
1840	5,385	2,642	11,477	19,504

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	5,377	528	10,010	15,875
1800	4,566	2,365	9,415	16,346
1810	5,032	2,661	10,415	18,108
1820	5,168	2,497	10,094	17,759
1830	5,001	3,000	10,685	18,686
1840	4,232	3,965	10,612	18,809

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	3,836	178	7,626	11,640
1800	4,398	449	11,523	16,370
1810	4,427	1,054	11,490	16,971
1820	4,551	1,636	11,234	17,421
1830	4,032	2,430	10,197	16,659
1840	3,543	3,063	11,647	18,253

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	258	12	4,539	4,809
1800	499	101	5,703	6,303
1810	620	113	6,176	6,909
1820	795	195	7,664	8,654
1830	818	222	9,569	10,609
1840	811	216	14,677	15,704

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	1,286	64	14,472	15,822
1800	2,200	342	16,108	18,650
1810	2,656	483	15,591	18,730
1820	3,201	627	19,247	23,075
1830	2,909	1,084	21,275	25,268
1840	2,505	1,556	24,801	28,862

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	3,641	213	26,937	30,791
1800	4,572	473	26,478	31,523
1810	5,671	783	27,983	34,437
1820	6,555	1,777	32,097	40,459
1830	6,370	2,716	36,703	45,789

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	5,877	604	18,953	25,434
1800	6,830	1,536	24,150	32,516
1810	6,697	1,537	21,021	29,255
1820	6,720	2,163	24,580	33,463
1830	6,533	3,098	30,625	40,256

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	1,255	323	11,925	13,503
1800	2,843	2,771	20,900	26,514
1810	4,672	5,671	36,212	46,455
1820	4,357	10,326	48,055	62,738
1830	4,120	14,790	61,710	80,620
1840	3,212	17,980	81,321	102,513

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	3,417	775	10,784	14,976
1800	4,264	1,344	12,018	17,626
1810	4,431	2,221	14,606	21,258
1820	3,320	1,387	11,217	15,924
1830	2,984	2,048	11,287	16,319
1840	2,537	2,449	11,915	16,901

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	6,030	294	11,679	18,003
1800	6,288	262	8,508	15,058
1810	7,572	677	9,731	17,980
1820	6,396	922	9,082	16,400
1830	6,447	1,266	12,103	19,816
1840	5,127	1,240	8,292	14,659

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	11,176	164	10,004	21,344
1800	12,191	648	8,346	21,185
1810	9,189	4,929	6,471	20,589
1820	11,285	1,096	7,835	20,216
1830	11,585	1,202	7,667	20,474
1840	10,640	1,080	7,763	19,483

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	6,985	343	8,216	15,544
1800	6,399	622	6,678	13,699
1810	6,000	636	6,158	12,794
1820	6,048	894	6,032	12,974
1830	6,183	1,179	6,097	13,459
1840	5,757	1,413	6,074	13,244

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	4,305	136	4,161	8,502
1800	4,401	307	3,889	8,297
1810	3,937	388	3,860	8,005
1820	3,668	694	3,716	8,078
1830	3,899	1,213	3,788	8,900
1840	4,401	1,292	3,402	9,095

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	10,085	404	10,124	20,613
1800	9,558	571	9,043	19,172
1810	12,435	412	7,398	20,245
1820	9,419	567	6,514	16,500
1830	10,129	851	6,789	17,769
1840	9,280	817	5,915	16,012

	Slaves.	F. Col.	White.	Total.
1790	10,130	804	11,664	22,598
1800	9,760	1,833	11,030	22,623
1810	11,693	2,536	12,439	26,668
1820	10,328	3,382	13,455	27,165
1830	9,997	4,076	14,222	28,295
1840	9,816	5,120	14,599	29,535

Note.—Carroll county is not included in this statement, having been created since 1830, and the population of Baltimore and Frederick counties, from which Carroll was taken, is not carried out in 1840, part of their population being then included in the census of Carroll county.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious errors in punctuation have been fixed.

Page 8: “l’etat c’est” changed to “l’état c’est”

Page 12: “must he fixed” changed to “must be fixed”

Page 31: The spelling of Allegany County was fixed.

Page 45: “it views and purposes” changed to “its views and purposes”

SLAVERY IN MARYLAND

Letter I.

Letter II.