Page:A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853).djvu/193

 slave-holder, published in 1847 an address to the people of Virginia, showing that slavery is injurious to public welfare, in which he shows the influence of slavery in producing a decrease of the white population. He says:

It appears that, in the ten years from 1830 to 1840, Virginia lost by emigration no fewer than three hundred and seventy-five thousand of her people; of whom East Virginia lost three hundred and four thousand, and West Virginia seventy-one thousand. At this rate, Virginia supplies the West, every ten years, with a population equal in number to the population of the State of Mississippi in 1840. * * * * * She has sent—or, we should rather say, she has driven—from her soil at least one-third of all the emigrants who have gone from the old states to the new. More than another third have gone from the other old slave states. Many of these multitudes, who have left the slave states, have shunned the regions of slavery, and settled in the free countries of the West. These were generally industrious and enterprising white men, who found, by sad experience, that a country of slaves was not the country for them. It is a truth, a certain truth, that slavery drives free labourers—farmers, mechanics and all, and some of the best of them, too—out of the country and fills their places with negroes. * * * * * Even the common mechanical trades do not flourish in a slave state. Some mechanical operations must indeed be performed in every civilized country; but the general rule is the South is to import from abroad every fabricated thing, that can be carried in ships, such as household furniture, boats, boards, laths, carts, ploughs, axes, and axe-helves; besides innumerable other things, which free communities are accustomed to make for themselves. What is most wonderful is, that the forests, and iron mines of the South supply, in great part, the materials out of which these things are made. The Northern freemen come with their ships, carry home the timber and pig-iron, work them up, supply their own want with a part, and then sell the rest, at a good profit in the Southern markets. Now, although mechanics, by setting up their shops in the South, could save all these freights and profits yet so it is that Northern mechanics will not settle in the South; and the Southern mechanics are undersold by their Northern competitors.

In regard to education, Rev. Theodore Parker gives the following statistics, in his "Letters on Slavery," p. 65:

In 1671, Sir William Berkely, Governor of Virginia, said, "I thank God that there are no free schools nor printing-presses (in Virginia) and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years." In 1840, in the fifteen slave states and territories, there were at the various primary schools 201,085 scholars; at the various primary schools of the free states, 1,626,028. The State of Ohio alone had, at her primary schools, 17,524 more scholars than all the fifteen slave states. New York alone had 301,282 more.

In the slave states there are 1,368,325 free white children between the ages of five and twenty; in the free States; 3,536,689 such children. In the slave states, at schools and colleges, there are 201,172 pupils; in the free states, 2,212,444 pupils at schools or colleges. Thus, in the slave states, out of twenty-five free white children between five and twenty, there are not quite five at any school or college; while out of twenty-five such children in the free states, there are more than fifteen at school or college. In the slave states, of the free white population that is over twenty years of age, there is almost one-tenth part that are unable to read and write; while in the free states there is not quite one in one hundred and fifty-six who is deficient to that degree.

In New England there are but few born therein, and more than twenty years of age, who are unable to read and write; but many foreigners arrive there with no education, and thus swell the number of the illiterate, and diminish the apparent effect of her free institutions. The South has few such emigrants; the ignorance of the Southern States, therefore, is to be ascribed to other causes. The Northern men who settle in the slave-holding states have perhaps about the average culture of the North, and more than that of the South. The South, therefore, gains educationally from immigration, as the North loses.

Among the Northern States Connecticut, and among the Southern States South Carolina, are to a great degree free from disturbing influences of this character. A comparison between the two will show the relative effects of the respective institutions of the North and South. In Connecticut there are 168,843 free persons over twenty years of age; in South Carolina, but 111,663. In Connecticut there are but 526 persons over twenty who are unable to read and write, while in South Carolina there are 29,615 free white persons over twenty years of age unable to read and write. In South Carolina, out of each 626 free whites more than twenty years of age there are more than 58 wholly unable to read or write; out of that number of such persons in Connecticut, not quite two! More than the sixth part of the adult freemen of South Carolina are unable to read the vote which will be deposited at the next election. It is but fair to infer that at least one-third of the adults of South Carolina, if not of much of the South are unable to read and understand even a newspaper. Indeed, in one of the slave states this is not a matter of mere inferences; for in 1837 Gov. Clarke, of Kentucky, declared in his message to the legislature that "one-third of the adult population were unable to write their names;" yet Kentucky has a "school-fund," valued at $1,221,819, while South Carolina has none. One sign of this want of ability even to read, in the slave states, is too striking to be passed by The staple reading of the least-cultivated Americans is the newspapers, one of the lowest forms of literature, though one of the most-powerful, read even by men who read nothing else. In the slave states there are published but 377 newspapers, and in the free 1135. These numbers do not express the entire difference in the case; for, as a general rule, the circulation of the Southern newspapers is 50 to 75 per cent. less than that of the North. Suppose, however, that each Southern newspaper has two-thirds the circulation of a Northern journal, we have then but 225 newspapers for the slave states! The more valuable journals—the monthlies and quarterlies—are published almost entirely in the free States. The number of churches, the number and character of the clergy who labor for these churches, are other measures of the intellectual and moral condition of the people. The scientific character of the Southern clergy has been already touched on. Let us compare the more external facts.