colored people were concerned, was good. Their mean age was the
greatest of any element of our population, and their increase was
about normal, or 1.50 per cent. annually. In the twenty years from
1840 to 1860 it had kept up this rate with hardly the slightest
variation, while the increase of the free colored people of the South
during the same period had been 1 per cent, annually.[4] The increase
of persons of mixed blood in the North did not necessarily imply
laxity of morals, as the census compilers always delighted to say, but
could be easily accounted for by the marriages occurring between
persons of this class. I have seen more than fifty persons, all of
mixed blood, descend from one couple, and these with the persons
joined to them by marriages as they have come to marriageable age,
amounted to over seventy souls--all in about a half century. That the
slaves had, despite their fearful death rate, the manumissions and the
escapes, increased twice as fast as the free colored people of the
North, three times as fast as the free colored people of the South,
and faster than the white people with all the immigration of that
period, can be accounted for only by the enormous birth rate of that
people consequent upon their sad condition. Their increase was
abnormal, and when properly viewed, proves too much.

There is no way of determining the general wealth of the colored
people of the North at the period we are describing; but some light
may be thrown upon their material condition from the consideration
that they were supporting a few publications and building and
supporting churches, and were holders of considerable real estate. In
New York city, the thirteen thousand colored people paid taxes on
nearly a million and a half in real estate, and had over a quarter
million of dollars in the savings banks. It is probable that the
twenty-five thousand in Philadelphia owned more in proportion than