|
That there will be a supremacy of colored persons in some of the Southern
States, the result of registration indicates, but it can only be
temporary. There can be no influx of colored immigration, while white
immigration and the natural increase of the white population must change
the present relation of white and colored voters at a very early day.
The New York Tribune reasons very correctly on this subject as follows:
There are twelve millions of people in the South, whereof at least eight
millions are whites. There is ample room for fifty millions more, and
crowds are flocking in--all of them whites. Europe is sending us a full
thousand per day, and the South proffers them cheap land, a genial clime,
and employment for every sort of industrial capacity.
Now that a good harvest has delivered the South from famine, and her
reconstruction is in rapid progress, there is no region on earth that
should attract so many immigrants. Twenty years hence she will have twentyfive to thirty millions of people, whereof the blacks will probably number five or six millions. Unless all the laws which have hitherto governed the increase of population are subverted, the whites of the South must increase faster than blacks by at least four to one. Not that the blacks will fail to increase also; but they are nowise recruited by immigration and cannot be. Africa sends forth no voluntary emigrants; the slave trade is on its last legs; and no negroes are coming to this country from any quarter. How, then, is it possible that the four millions of blacks in this country should overbear the eight millions of whites in the South, with the millions on the point of flocking thither?
|