Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/289

Rh any reason be given for this immense difference in the growth of the two States, only that the one was a free and the other a slave State. Take Indiana and Kentucky. They are adjoining States, and Kentucky has the larger territory. In 1810, Indiana had 23,890 people, and Kentucky 324,237, but in 1850, Indiana was ahead, and had 977,154. Illinois had in 1810, 11,501, but in 1850 she had 846,034. I compare these adjacent States, and contend that the figures show beyond controversy that slavery has been an obstacle to the growth, and an incubus upon the energies of Kentucky.

Everywhere the rule holds good. Missouri is a larger State, has a milder climate, a more prolific soil, and greater facilities for commerce than the adjoining State of Iowa. She had, too, more than twenty-five years the start as a State, yet Iowa has nearly overtaken, and before the end of the present decade will surpass her in popular numbers. Who can doubt that Missouri would now have double her present population if the foot of a slave had never touched her soil? Compare Wisconsin and Minnesota with Arkansas and Florida. Have not the former sprung forward to giant greatness, while the latter have slowly dragged the overburdening power of slavery.

Men who emigrate are not usually men of large fortunes, who own slaves, and live at their ease, but they are generally men whose limbs are made sinewy by hard work; who go to new countries to get land and homes, and who expect to depend chiefly upon their own labor. Slave States are objectionable to such men, for they are too poor to be slaveholders, and too proud-spirited to wear the badge of slavery. Slavery has a terror in its very name to foreign immigration. Oppressed at home, they look to America as the "land of the free." When they come to us they are generally ready to work on our farms, canals and railroads with white laborer but they are not willing to take their places under the same task-master with negro slaves. Establish slavery here, and the effect will be as it has elsewhere. You will turn aside that tide of free white labor which has poured itself like a