I do not affirm or
intimate that this must be his destiny in all countries. In the tropical
regions of the earth, where he may have little to fear from the
competition of the more civilized white man, he may preserve and
multiply his race. Let him try the experiment. It is worth trying.
Far be it from me to intimate that the negro is the only class of our
population that are in this sad condition. In our large cities and towns
there are hundreds of thousands of men who have no drop of African blood
in their veins, and who are more clamorous than any other class against
negro equality, who, through ignorance or vice, or superstition, or
inevitable calamity, are in the same hard lot; their children, if they
have any, perish in great numbers in infancy, and they will add nothing
to the future population of our country. That will be derived from a
stronger, nobler parentage. Their race will become extinct. Their case
differs from that of the colored man only in this, that they are not
distinguished by color and features from the rest of the population; so
that the decay of their race cannot be traced by the eye and the memory,
and expressed in statistical tables.
We are now prepared to see why the colored population has been, for a
considerable time, declining in New York and New England. In those
States population is dense; all occupations which afford a comfortable
living for a family are crowded and the competition of the white man is
quite too much for the negro.
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