with their profusion of servants in livery, exhibited on pleasant
afternoons, when the mothers and daughters of these cotton lords take
their accustomed airing. So powerfully has this feeling of exclusiveness
prevailed that no son or daughter dares marry out of their circle. For a
long series of years has this custom prevailed, and the consequence is
that the families above named are nearly of a common blood; and it needs
no physiologist to tell us the invariable effect arising from this
transgression of natural laws, on the physical and mental faculties of
both sexes. In such a state of society is it strange that the present
generation should have grown up with ideas better suited to the castes
of India than to those of republican America? As a consequence they
consider their condition more elevated than that of their neighbors in
the adjoining States, and of almost imperial consideration. But no
language can express their bitter contempt for the people of the North,
more particularly for those of New England birth.

In perusing the history and progress of any portion of our country, the
statistics of population become an interesting study. Let us glance over
a brief table, showing what the increase has been in this district for
the past forty years, and its miserable deficiency in physical means of
strength and defense. In 1820 the district contained 32,000 souls, of
which there were 4,679 whites and 27,339 slaves, and 141 free blacks. In
1860 there were 6,714 whites and 32,500 slaves, and 800 free blacks,
making a total of 40,014,--an increase of whites of 2,035, of slaves
5,161, of free blacks 650:--total increase 7,855 in forty years. Here we
have nearly the largest disproportion of whites to slaves in any part of
the South. Of the 6,714 whites, about 1,000 are probably men over
twenty-one years of age, and it is not to be presumed that an equal
number are capable of bearing arms. Is it possible to find anywhere a
community more helpless for its own protection or defense? It is one of