Economic and Political Connections between
Lowell and Southern States
Document 8a

The whole number of slaveholders in the Slave States, in 1850 …is less than 350,000, including females and minors. The number of voters in this class is therefore much smaller. But, counting them all as voters, they are less than the number of freemen who voted at the last Presidential election in New England, even without including Vermont. They are less than the number who voted in either Pennsylvania or Ohio, and less than two-thirds the number who voted in New York.

… The number of free inhabitants in the Slave States is 6,412,605, and in the Free States 13,434,686. The number of freemen in the Free States is, therefore, over 600,000 more than double the number in the Slave States.

The representation in Congress is, from the Slave States, ninety members, representing the 6,000,000; and from the Free States one hundred and forty-four, representing the 13,000,000. This discrepancy between population and representation arises from the fact that, in determining the number of representatives to which each State is entitled, five slaves are reckoned equal to three freemen. The 3,200,304 slaves, therefore, in the Slave States are reckoned equal to 1,920,1823 freemen, and are represented accordingly. The slaves of the South have, therefore, a representation equal to that of the Free States of New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

Without the representation allowed to slave property, the number of representatives from the Slave States would be seventy-five, instead of ninety; and from the Free States one hundred and fifty-nine, instead of one hundred and forty-four; a gain of thirty in favor of the Free States, making their representation double that of the Slave States, even without the representation of Rhode Island, Wisconsin, California, and Iowa. (It will be seen that in the late severe contests in the House of Representatives, had freemen only been represented, the question would invariably have been decided in favor of the North.)