[337] of the Slave States. Of the poets mentioned in Griswold's ‘Poets and Poetry of America,’ 122 are of the Free States, and only 16 of the Slave States. Of the poets whose place of birth appears in Read's ‘Female Poets of America,’ 71 are of the Free States, and only 11 of the Slave States. If we try authors by weight or quality, it is the same as when we try them by numbers. Out of the Free States come all whose works have a place in the permanent literature of the country, —Irving, Prescott, Sparks, Bancroft, Emerson, Motley, Hildreth, Hawthorne; also, Bryant, Longfellow, Dana, Halleck, Whittier, Lowell,— and I might add indefinitely to the list. But what name from the Slave States can find entrance there? A similar disproportion appears in the number of Patents, during the last three years, 1857, 1858, and 1859, attesting the inventive industry of the contrasted regions. In the Free States there were 9,557; in the Slave States, 1,306: making a difference of 8,251 in favor of Freedom. The number in Free Massachusetts was 1,351; in Slave South Carolina, 39. The number in Free Connecticut, small in territory and population, was 628; in Slave Virginia, large in territory and population, 184. From these things we might infer the ignorance prevalent in the Slave States; but this shows itself in specific results of a deplorable character, authenticated by the official census. In the Slave States there were 493,026 native white adults, persons over twenty years of age, unable to read and write; while in the Free States, with double the native white population, there were but 248,725 persons of this class in this unhappy predicament: in the Slave States the proportion being i in 5 of the adult native whites; in the Free States 1 in 22. The number in Free Massachusetts, in an adult native white population of 470,375, was 1,055, or 1 in 446; the number in Slave South Carolina, in a like population of only 120,136, was 15,580, or 1 in 8. The number in Free Connecticut was 1 in 256, in Slave Virginia 1 in 5; in Free New Hampshire 1 in 192, and in Slave North Carolina 1 in 3.
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