nce along that boundary and
the shore of Lake Michigan to the place of departure, we shall have
embraced within the line described ten of the thirty-four States of the
Union. By an examination of Table 42, already referred to, it will be
seen that outside of those ten States the free colored population not
only did not increase between 1840 and 1850, but actually diminished,
and that all the increase of that decade was in those ten States.

Why then was there an increase in those ten States, while in the other
twenty-four there was an actual decrease? I think this question can only
be answered by ascribing that increase to emancipation. In Kentucky,
Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, slavery is unprofitable and declining,
and acts of emancipation frequently occur. Pennsylvania and New Jersey,
before the passage of the fugitive slave law of 1850, were favorite
resorts of fugitives, perhaps partly on account of the known sympathies
of the Quakers. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, were also resorted to by
fugitives, both on account of their easy accessibility from adjacent
Slave States, and their proximity to Canada, and also because such labor
as a fugitive from slavery is best able to do, is there always in
demand. These States have also received thousands of colored persons,
brought to them by humane and conscientious masters, for the very
purpose of emancipating them.

From 1850 to 1860 the facts are still more striking. The increase which
occurred was not, as would have been true of a natural increase,
scattered over our whole territory, and in some proportion to the
colored population previously existing, but almost wholly, either where
the unprofitableness and decline of slavery was leading to emancipation,
or where from any cause the fugitive slave law of 1850 was not strictly
enforced. Examples of the former are Maryland, Virginia, and Missouri,
and of the latter are Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and even
Massachusetts and Connecticut, in the latter of which it had been
declining for twenty years previous.

With the facts before us, then, furnished by the United States Census,
from 1790 to 1860, how is it possible to believe that the colored
population of this country has ever increased at all, except hi slavery?
How can we help seeing that it is slavery, and slavery alone, which has
swelled their numbers from a little more than half a million, as it was
in 1790, to near four and a half millions at the present time