Martinsburg Independent

The census report gives some very interesting figures regarding the colored population, and it clearly shows that the exodus has made but an insignificant draft upon the colored labor of the South. All but 933,260 of the negroes of the nation are in fifteen Southern states, which divides a colored population of 5,643,891 among themselves in the following order: Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, Florida, Delaware and West Virginia. The growth of the total colored population is made conspicuous by the following comparison:
1880, negro population........6,577,151
1870, negro population..........4,441,880
By the side of this increase of 2,135,321 in twenty years we have an increase of 16,574,224 in white population for the same time. Making allowance for the accession of 2,500,000 inhabitants by immigration during this time, the rate of increase has been nearly the same for negroes as for whites, that is, about 25 per cent. every ten years. This record is sufficient to annihilate all theories that the colored race is to decay, or disappear from the United States by colonization. The negroes are increasing as fast as the white people, and already there are too many of them for a colonization project to be practicable. To remove the colored people would be to take away one out of every eight inhabitants of the United States. It is well that the nation is beginning seriously to regard the colored man as a permanent citizen, and it will be well for the South to speedily recognize the place he must inevitably hold as a citizen of Southern states.