The Colored Regulars in the United States Army by T. G. Steward
page 38 of 387 (09%)
page 38 of 387 (09%)
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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 |
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