HKB
as the number of whites augments with twofold rapidity since the abolition of slavery, the blacks would soon be, as it were, lost in the midst of a strange population.
A district which is cultivated by slaves is in general more scantily peopled than a district cultivated by free labor: moreover, America is still a new country, and a state is therefore not half peopled at the time when it abolished slavery. No sooner is an end put to slavery, than the want of free labor is felt, and a crowd of enterprising adventurers immediately arrive from all parts of the country, who hasten to profit by the fresh resources which are then opened to industry. The soil is soon divided among them, and a family of white settlers takes possession of each tract of country. Besides which, European emigration is exclusively directed to the free states; for what would be the fate of a poor emigrant who crosses the Atlantic in search of ease and happiness, if he were to land in a country where labor is stigmatized as degrading?
Thus the white population grows by its natural increase, and at the same time by the immense influx of emigrants; while the black population receives no emigrants, and is upon its decline. The proportion which existed between the two races is soon inverted. The negroes constitute a scanty remnant, a poor tribe of vagrants, which is lost in the midst of an immense people in full possession of the land; and the presence of the blacks is only marked by the injustice and the hardships of which they are the unhappy victims.
In several of the western states the negro race never made its appearance; and in all the northern states it is rapidly declining. Thus the great question of its future condition is confined within a narrow circle, where it becomes less formidable, though not more easy of solution.
The more we descend toward the south, the more difficult does it become to abolish slavery with advantage: and this arises from several physical causes, which it is important to point out.
The first of these causes is the climate: it is well known that in proportion as Europeans approach the tropics, they suffer more from labor. Many of the Americans even assert, that within a certain latitude the exertions which a negro can make without danger are fatal to them;[248] but I do not think that this opinion, which is so favorable to the indolence of the inhabitants of southern regions, is confirmed by experience. The southern parts of the Union are not hotter than the south of Italy and of Spain;[249] and it may be asked why the European cannot work as well there as in the two latter countries. If slavery has been abolished in Italy and in Spain without causing the destruction of the masters, why should not the same thing take place in the Union? I cannot believe that Nature has prohibited the Europeans in Georgia and the Floridas, under pain of death, from raising the means of subsistence from the soil; but their labor would unquestionably be more irksome and less productive[250] to them than the inhabitants of New England. As the free workman thus loses a portion of his superiority over the slave in the southern states, there are fewer inducements to abolish slavery.