Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/685

Rh colored race, owing to the interest of masters. It was expected that, with freedom, the colored people would begin to die out like the Indians. This was based on the general doctrine that, when a superior and inferior race occupy the same territory, in free competition, the inferior will go into a decline. That this was a total misconception of the subject, on theoretical principles, it would not now be difficult to show; and, that it was practically wide of the mark, the late census is abundantly sufficient to prove. Still, in the facts known previous to this census, there was much in favor of such a view. In the decades preceding emancipation, the ratio of increase of the free colored was only about half that of the slaves.

Mr. Kennedy, Superintendent of the Census of 1860, believed that freedom was unfavorable to the multiplication of the colored people. He says, "Leaving the issue of the present civil war for time to determine, it should be observed, if large numbers of slaves shall be hereafter emancipated, so many will be transferred from a faster to a slower rate of increase." He held that "the white race is no more favorable to the progress of the African race in its midst than it has been to the perpetuity of the Indians on its borders." He was of opinion that the "developments of the census, to a good degree, explain the slow progress of the free colored population in the Northern States, and indicate, with unerring certainty, the gradual extinction of that people the more rapidly as, whether free or slave, they become diffused among the dominant race."

If these were the views which appeared to be warranted by the showing of the eighth and previous censuses, they were certainly not contravened by anything in the ninth census (1870), but apparently more than confirmed; and there was much to encourage the prevailing notion that after emancipation the colored population would increase less rapidly than before. Up to the very taking of the last census this opinion had taken such hold as to enter as a factor into political calculations. It was expected by leaders of both the great parties that under the new census the South would lose relatively in Congressional representation.

Perhaps the writer may be permitted to state that, about the middle of the last decade (1875-'76), he made a leisurely trip through the South, one object of which was to study this subject. He found no physician in the South, whether native or Northern, but believed that the colored race was in a decline and slowly undergoing the process of extinction. It was believed no doubt the result of a dominating idea which preoccupied the mind that births were fewer and deaths more frequent than formerly under slavery. According to the census of 1870, the colored people died off more rapidly than the white, as well in the South as in the North. The report of deaths, though obviously imperfect, shows that this greater mortality of the colored takes place among the children. It was found that the cemetery