At the first census, in every slave State there was a very large majority of whites--now, the slaves out-number the whites in South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana, and the next census will unquestionably add Florida and Alabama, and…
Lewis Tappan
The Public Record
Lewis Tappan was an American abolitionist who in 1841 helped to secure freedom for the enslaved Africans aboard the Amistad. He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, into a Calvinist household.
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In the meantime, especially in the cotton States, the slaves will continue to increase in a ratio far beyond the whites, and will at length acquire a fearful preponderance.
On the other hand, many of the young and enterprising among you will flee from the lassitude, the anarchy, the wretchedness engendered by slavery, and seek their fortunes in lands where law affords protection, and where labor is honored…
Emigrants from the North, and from foreign countries, will, as at present, avoid your borders, within which no attractions will be found for virtue and industry.
The causes which now retard the increase of your population must continue to operate, so long as slavery lasts.
Surely, surely, if the South be wanting in every element of prosperity--if ignorance, barbarity and poverty be her characteristics, it is not because she has not exercised her due influence in the general government, or received her share…
Of the Judges of the Supreme Court, 18 have been taken from the slave, and but 14 from the free States.
For 37 years out of 60, the chair of the House of Representatives has been filled and its Committees appointed by slaveholders.
By law, midshipmen and cadets, at West Point, are appointed according to the Federal ratio; thus have the slaveholders secured to themselves an additional number of officers in the Army and Navy, on account of their slaves.
A very brief statement will convince you, that if they are now feeble and emaciated, it is not because they have been deprived of their share of the loaves and fishes.
Thus, the distribution among the States of the surplus revenue, and of the proceeds of the public lands, was made according to this same iniquitous rule.
The rule of federal numbers, confined by the Constitution to the apportionment of representatives, has been extended, by the influence of the slaveholders, to other and very different subjects.