border States, the
President does not overstate its influence in crushing the rebellion and
restoring peace.

Maryland, the border States, and the South would then indeed commence a
new career of progress, by removing slavery and negroism; and their
augmented wealth, and that of the whole country, would soon return to
the Government, in increased revenue, a sum far exceeding the cost of
gradual emancipation and colonization. Indeed, if, as a mere financial
question, I was devising the most effective plan for liquidating the
national debt and reducing our taxes, it would be thus vastly to augment
our wealth and population by adopting this system.

The census of 1860 exhibits our increase of population from 1790 to 1860
at 35.59 per cent., and of our wealth 126.45. Now, if we would increase
the wealth of the country only one tenth in the next ten years, by the
gradual disappearance of slavery and negroism (far below the results of
the census), then, our wealth being now $16,159,616,068, the effect of
such increase would be to make our wealth in 1870, instead of
$36,593,450,585, more than sixteen hundred millions greater, being more
than three times our present debt, and in 1880, instead of
$82,865,868,849, over three billions six hundred millions more, or more
than seven times our present debt.

Before the close of this letter, it will be shown that the difference,
_per capita_, of the annual products of Massachusetts and Maryland
exceeds $120. As to the other Southern States, the excess is much
greater. Now, if the annual products of the South were increased $120
each _per capita_ (still far below Massachusetts) by the exclusion of
slavery, then multiplying the total population of the South, 12,229,727,
by 120, the result would be an addition to the annual value of the
products of the South of $1,467,567,240, and in the decade,
$14,675,672,400; the first amount being three times our debt on the 1st
July, 1862, and the last sum thirty times our debt on that day. This
change would not be immediate, but there can be no doubt that, with the
vastly greater natural advantages of the South, the superiority of free
to slave labor, the immense immigration, especially from Europe to the
South, aided by the Homestead bill, and the conversion of large
plantations into small farms, an addition of at least one billion of
dollars would be made, by the exclusion of slavery, to the value of the
products of the South, in the ten years