The census statistics, commencing with 1840, have contributed much to play the mischief with the equanimity of slaveholders.  They have always known that thorough education in the South was mainly confined to their own families.  When, however, the discovery was made public that only one in seven of the aggregate white population of the South was receiving instruction during the year, the disclosure became alarming.[D] It stood little better than the educational progress of the British Islands, which had crept up, under the fight with Toryism, to the alarming extent of one in eight.  That one in four and a half of the aggregate population of the free States was receiving school instruction, made the contrast unpleasant to the mind of the slaveholder.  He knew that the fact was ‘world—­wide,’ that slaveholders had always controlled the policy of Southern legislation.  He was aware that slaveholders had made themselves responsible for this neglect of the children of the South; and knew also that public opinion would visit the blame where it legitimately belonged.  Pro-slavery sagacity was quick-sighted in its apprehensions that it could not dodge the inquiry, ’Whence comes this disparity?’

The statistics of the two sections presented a still more obnoxious comparison to the pro-slavery sensibilities, as it respects the physical condition of the respective populations.  The cotton States have mostly been the advocates of ‘free trade,’ some of them tenaciously so.  They deemed it impossible to introduce manufacturing, to much extent, into sections where the yearly surpluses in production were wholly absorbed by investment in land and negroes.  The consequence has been, want of diversified industry and want of profitable occupation for the poorer classes.  In the Northern and in some of the Border States, a different industrial policy has been pursued.  Diversified occupation has raised up skilled labor in nearly every branch of industry.  Notwithstanding the greater rigor of climate, adult labor on the average, under full and compensated employment, performs nearly three hundred solid days’ work in the year.  The eight millions of white population in the South, in consequence of this want of profitable occupation, perform much less, perhaps not one hundred and fifty days’ work on the average.  The following table, published in 1856-1857, by Mr. Guthrie, then Secretary of the Treasury, discloses a condition of things very remarkable; but no wise astonishing to those who have investigated the causes of the disparity.  The ratio of annual per capita production to each man, woman, and child, white and black, in the respective States, exclusive of the gains or earnings of commerce, stood as follows: