statistics to show that Kentucky, in this re-
spect, was in a better condition than the
State of Ohio. Sir, start at Cairo on the
Mississippi river, and follow up the Ohio
river, and the line that divides the slave from
the free States, until you reach the Delaware,
and yon shall find that in every State where
free labor prevails, the value of the farms
are greater per acre than in the adjoining
slave States. Thus, in Illinois, the farms
in those counties bordering upon Kentucky,
have a greater value per acre than those in
Kentucky bordering upon Illinois. Between
Indiana and Kentucky is the same difference;
so between Ohio and Kentucky, Ohio and
Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and
Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Now, statistics are liable to be abused, I
know. Not from any one, or two, or even
three instances, would I argue anything, for
there is great danger of generalizing too
soon. But when you find, without a solitary
exception, all the facts uniform, all testifying
the same way, what is the conclusion to
which it must force you?
Lotus come now to our beloved Maryland ;
and I say at the outset that I do not know a
State that, within the same number of square
miles, has so many of the elements of empire
as Maryland. A fertile soil; unrivalled fa-
cilities of water communication, and commu-
nications of art; mines which might almost
enrich the world—yet, as I have said, Mary-
land has gone down from the sixth to the
nineteenth in population. How stands it in
other respects? Seven counties in our State
BORDER=0 upon seven counties in Pennsylvania,
differing not greatly in size, not at all in
their products, wheat being the leading sta-
ple in both States, and the mines very similar
in both. Yet, when we come to compare the
seven counties in Pennsylvania with the
seven counties in Maryland, we find that of
the lands in Pennsylvania thirty-two and six-
tenths per cent. is waste and uncultivated,
while in Maryland it is thirty-seven and six-
tenths per cent. The cash value of the lands in
the seven counties in Maryland is $46,526,137 ;
in Pennsylvania it is $100,714,032. In these
counties in Maryland, the land is worth
$44 17 per acre; in Pennsylvania it is worth
$56 31 per acre.
I say again, this would prove nothing if it
were an isolated fact. But the uniformity of
the testimony teaches us that we must attribute
it to inc same great overriding cause, and I
have searched, and searched, and searched, to
find some cause other than the one which in
my own mind I have decided to be the cause ;
I do not find it. In those seven counties in
Maryland, of which I have spoken, there
were, by the last census, 11,954 slaves; not
enough to perform the labor of the counties,
but enough to exclude to some extent, free
labor from those counties. Now, suppose
that the extinction of slavery in Maryland |
should have no effect in reclaiming a single
acre of the waste and unimproved land in
those counties, but that it should simply ad-
vance the value of the lands to their value in
the adjoining counties in Pennsylvania, what
would be the result? The enhanced value
of the land alone would pay for every one of
those slaves the sum of $1,069 49.
Now look at other counties in the State, and
it is a singular circumstance that these things,
population and wealth, as we go from the
line that separates freedom from slavery,
show worse and worse against us. Let us
take the four lower counties upon this shore,
Prince George's, St. Mary's, Calvert and
St. Charles. The farms in those counties are
worth $11,854,436; one million dollars only
more than the lands of Frederick county
alone. The average value of the improved
and there is $24 49 per acre, against $44 17
per acre in the upper counties.
Mr. CLARKE. I only desire to state this,
in order to carry out the logical effect of the
argument. Take. Prince George's county,
for instance. There is a large section of that
county which you may say is perfectly bar-
ren, upon which nothing can be grown, in
consequence of its natural character. But if
yon will go into that portion of the county
which is fertile, and where slavery really ex-
ists, the value of the land will be found to
range, and has ranged for five or six years
past, from $60 up to $80 an acre. All the
sales of land made there in the slaveholding
section of the county, from 1856 up to the
present time, have averaged something like
$80 an acre. And I will state this fact, that
land in Prince George's county at all culti-
vatable, ranges now higher than that. And
the quotations of sales show that lands there
sell higher than lands in Frederick county,
Howard county, or any of those north of
them. I just put that fact before the House
simply to test the question whether the exis-
tence of slavery there necessarily depreciates
the value of the land. Where you find the
most slaves in that county the land is highest,
selling from $80 to $100 an acre,
Mr. SCHLEY. I will state that many of the
lands in Frederick county, remote from the
town of Frederick, sell tor $150 an acre, and
I will also state that much of the area of our
county is uncultivated and uncultivatable on
account of mountain ranges.
Mr. CLARKE. I know there are a few small
tracts in Frederick: county that may sell for
that. But our tracts of land are from 400 to
800 acres in a body, at the price of $80 an
acre.
Mr. SCHLEY, I know of a farm of three
hundred and odd acres which was sold the
other day at $150 an acre.
Mr. STOCKBRIDGE. I am very glad to learn
that since it has become pretty generally
understood that slavery was dead in Mary-
land—to use the expression of gentlemen upon |
