406
where the danger would be real, I cannot imagine that the fear would be less general.
If, on the one hand, it be admitted (and the fact is unquestionable), that the coloured population perpetually accumulates in the extreme south, and that it increases more rapidly than that of the whites; and if, on the other hand, it be allowed that it is impossible to foresee a time at which the whites and the blacks will be so intermingled as to derive the same benefits from society; must it not be inferred, that the blacks and the whites will, sooner or later, come to open strife in the southern states of the Union? But if it be asked what the issue of the struggle is likely to be, it will readily be understood, that we are here left to form a very vague surmise of the truth. The human mind may succeed in tracing a wide circle, as it were, which includes the course of future events; but within that circle a thousand various chances and circumstances may direct it in as many different ways; and in every picture of the future there is a dim spot, which the eye of the understanding cannot penetrate. It appears, however, to be extremely probable, that in the West India islands the white race is destined to be subdued, and the black population to share the same fate upon the continent.
In the West India islands the white planters are surrounded by an immense black population; on the continent, the blacks are placed between the ocean and an innumerable people, which already extends over them in a dense mass from the icy confines of Canada to the frontiers of Virginia, and from the banks of the Missouri to the shores of the Atlantic. If the white citizens of North America remain united, it cannot be supposed that the negroes will escape the destruction with which they are menaced; they must be subdued by want or by the sword. But the black population which is accumulated along the coast of the gulf of Mexico, has a chance of success, if the American Union is dissolved when the struggle between the two races begins. If the federal tie were broken, the citizens of the south would be wrong to rely upon any lasting succour from their northern countrymen. The latter are well aware that the danger can never reach them; and unless they are constrained to march to the assistance of the south by a positive obligation, it may be foreseen that the sympathy of colour will be insufficient to stimulate their exertions.
