xes. In such a state of society is it strange that the present
generation should have grown up with ideas better suited to the castes
of India than to those of republican America? As a consequence they
consider their condition more elevated than that of their neighbors in
the adjoining States, and of almost imperial consideration. But no
language can express their bitter contempt for the people of the North,
more particularly for those of New England birth.

In perusing the history and progress of any portion of our country, the
statistics of population become an interesting study. Let us glance over
a brief table, showing what the increase has been in this district for
the past forty years, and its miserable deficiency in physical means of
strength and defense. In 1820 the district contained 32,000 souls, of
which there were 4,679 whites and 27,339 slaves, and 141 free blacks. In
1860 there were 6,714 whites and 32,500 slaves, and 800 free blacks,
making a total of 40,014,--an increase of whites of 2,035, of slaves
5,161, of free blacks 650:--total increase 7,855 in forty years. Here we
have nearly the largest disproportion of whites to slaves in any part of
the South. Of the 6,714 whites, about 1,000 are probably men over
twenty-one years of age, and it is not to be presumed that an equal
number are capable of bearing arms. Is it possible to find anywhere a
community more helpless for its own protection or defense? It is one of
the truths of science and philosophy that nature, when forced beyond its
own powers and laws, will react, and again restore its own supremacy. So
we here find a magnificent space of country, rich in all natural
requisites, and unsurpassed in its capabilities of producing not only
the necessaries of life, but its luxuries, having an exclusive right to
some of the most valuable staples of the world, which has been for a
century and a half the abode of an imperious few, who have, by
tyrannical power, wrung from the bones and muscles of generations of
poor Africans the means to sustain their luxury, power, and pride. They
have also robbed from the mother earth the fertility of its soil to its
utmost extent, leaving much of it completely exhausted. This state of
things has reacted on them; it has made them proud, domineering,
ambitious, and revengeful of fancied injuries. It has hurried them into
rebellion against the best government the world ever saw,--and this has
at last brought with it its own p