Page:A defence of the negro race in America from the assaults and charges of Rev. J. L. Tucker.djvu/23

 slavery, has been resurrected by the genius of civil freedom.

To-day this same people are the possessors of a wide domain of lands. Immense tracts of land have been brought by them into cultivation, and by this cultivation they have become producers of the most valuable staples.

I am indebted to the Editor of the "" for the following facts: "In the State of Georgia the Negro owns 680,000 acres of land, cut up into farms. In the Cotton States he owns 2,680,800 acres." And he adds to this the significant remark: "Think of it, that in the Cotton States, including a fraction of over two-thirds of the race, the Negro, in seventeen years, has accumulated territory equal in extent to the size of the "

Let me suggest here another estimate of this landed property of the Negro, acquired since emancipation. Taking the old slave States in the general, there has been a large acquisition of land in each and all of them. In the State of Georgia, as we have just seen, it was 680,000 acres. Let us put the figure as low as 400,000 for each State—for the purchase of farm lands has been everywhere a passion with the freedman—this 400,000 acres multiplied into 14, i. e. the number of the chief Southern States, shows an aggregate of 5,600,000 acres of land, the acquisition of the black race in less than twenty years.

But Dr. Tucker will observe a further fact of magnitude in this connection: It is the increased which has been developed on the part of the freedmen since emancipation. I present but one staple, and for the reason that it is almost exclusively the result of.

I will take the five years immediately preceding the late civil war and compare them with the five years preceding the last year's census-taking; and the contrast in the number of cotton-bales produced will show the industry and