Note 231 — Chapter X

The point respecting the slave-trade was insisted upon by the delegates of those three States, both as a matter of State pride and a matter of practical interest. They regarded the increase of their slave population by new importations as a thing of peculiarly domestic concern, the control of which they were unwilling to transfer to the general government. But they also contended for a political right which their States intended to exercise. The following table, taken from the United States Census, shows that in the twenty years which elapsed from 1790 to 1810 during eighteen of which the importation of slaves could not be prohibited by Congress, the slaves of those three States increased in a ratio so much larger than the rate of increase after the year 1808, as to make it apparent that it was not a mere abstraction on which they insisted. The right to admit the importation of slaves was exercised, and was intended to be exercised;—as some of the delegates of the three States declared in the Convention.

Progress of the Slave Population from 1790 to 1850, showing the Increase per Cent in each Period of Ten Years.

North Carolina.South Carolina.Georgia.

1790 to 180032.5336.46102.99

1800 to 1810[A]26.6534.3577.12

1810 to 182021.4331.6242.23

1820 to 183019.7922.6245.35

1830 to 1840[B]0.083.6829.15

1840 to 185017.3817.7135.85

But while the census shows that the power to admit slaves was exercised freely during the twenty years that followed the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it also shows that the States which insisted on retaining it for that period could well afford to surrender it at the stipulated time. In 1810, the proportion of the blacks of North Carolina to the whole population was 32.24 per cent, and in 1850 it was 36.36; in South Carolina the proportion in 1810 was 48.4, and in 1850, 58.93; in Georgia, in 1810 it was 42.4, and in 1850, 42.44. It is not probable, therefore, that the prosperity of those States has been diminished by the discontinuance of the slave-trade; for it is not likely that they could well sustain a much larger ratio of the blacks to the whites than that which now exists, and which will probably continue to be maintained at about the same point for a long period of time.

[A] The constitutional power of Congress to prohibit the importation took effect and was exercised in 1808.

[B] The great diminution in the rates of increase during this period is probably due to the removal of slaves into Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas.