Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/24

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THOUGHTS ON AMERICA.
11

the following ingredients. The numbers are conjectural and approximate:—

Table of Nationality.
White Immigrants since 1790, and their white descendants 4,350,934
Africans, and their decendants 3,626,585
White Immigrantas previous to 1790, and their white descendants  15,279,804

This does not include the Indians living within the territories and States of the Union. These facts show that a remarkable mingling of families of the Caucasian stock is taking place. The exact statistics would disclose a yet more remarkable mingling of the Caucasian and the Æthiopian races going on. The Africans are rapidly "bleaching" under the influence of democratic chemistry. If only one-tenth of the "coloured population" has Caucasian blood in its veins, then there are 362,698 descendants of this "amalgamation;" but if you estimate these hybrids as one in five, which is not at all excessive, we have then 725,397.

The thirty-one States now organized have a surface of 1,485,870 square miles, while the total area of the United States, so far as I have information, on the 17th of May, 1853, was 3,220,000 square miles. In the States, on an average, there are not sixteen persons to the square mile; in the whole territory, not eight to a mile. Massachusetts, the most densely peopled State, has more than one hundred and twenty-six to the mile, while Texas has but eighty-nine men for a hundred miles of land, more than eight hundred acres to each human soul.

In 1840, there were ten States, whose united populations exceeded 4,000,000, which yet had no town with 10,000 inhabitants.[1]

  1. The following table shows the occupation of 4,798,870 persons in 1840, ascertained by the census:—

    Table of Occupation.
    Engaged in Mining 15,211
    Agriculture 3,719,951
    Commerce 117,607
    Manufactures 791,749
    Navigation (Ocean) 56,021
    Navigation (Inland Waters) 33,076
    Learned Professions 65,255