PART I. CHAPTER I. GEOGRAPHICAL EXTENT-POPULATION AND ITS CLASSES-FOREIGNERS-SLAVERY-OCCUPATIONS OF THE PEOPLE-AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS-MINERALS-COMMERCE-MANUFACTURES-REVENUE -AND RESOURCES OF THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT-PREMIUM ON ITS BONDS 'REPUDIATION' AND DELINQUENCY OF SOME OF THE STATES-CAUSES AND EXPLANATION OF THESE MATTERS. THE United States of America occupy an area of 2,300,000 square miles; or 650,000 more than the whole of Europe, excepting Russia. Collectively, their greatest length is 3000 miles; their greatest breadth 1700 miles. They have a frontier line of about 10,000 miles; a sea-coast of 3600 miles; and a lake-coast of 1200 miles. Of the rivers: the Missouri is 3600 miles in length, or more than twice as long as the Danube; the Ohio is 600 miles longer than the Rhine; and the Hudson (entirely in the State of New York, and navigable for 160 miles) is 120 miles longer than the Thames. The territory of the United States is divided into twenty-six separate States and three territories, each of which has a separate government. [The population and statistics of each are given in Part II.] The State of Virginia has an area of 70,000 square miles, and is about one-third larger than England. B The State of Ohio contains 40,000 square miles, or 8000 more than the whole of Scotland. The harbour of the city of New York is the Atlantic outlet of a river, canal, and lake navigation of about 3000 miles, or the distance from Europe to America. From Augusta, in the State of Maine, to New Orleans in Louisiana, the distance is 1800 miles; or 200 miles more than from London to Constantinople. Such general landmarks may be useful, perhaps, to some, in referring to the internal relations of the North American republic, and comparing it with other nations. The want of accurate outlines of its geographical extent and political divisions, frequently leads English writers into very erroneous impressions and statements, which a few general facts would * When Mr. Alison (History of Europe, vol. x.) charges "the ardent democrats of Maine, the Ohio, and the Mississippi,' with causing the Canadian disturbances, and says they would suffer little in case of a war, "because their connexions are all inland," he writes, to say the least, very loosely: for he wrongly charges hundreds of thousands who live 1000 miles from Canada; and as to inland connexions, Maine happens to be the very State of the whole twenty-six which has the longest line of Atlantic coast: while the whole commerce of the Mississippi centres at New Orleans, one of the principal seaports. The English journals recently represented the Governor of New York, as being obliged to call out the militia to arrest AntiMormon criminals; but the transactions referred to took place in a frontier state as far from New York as St. Petersburgh is from London. Maunder's, Brookes', and other Gazetteers, published in London in 1844, describe New York, and other States and cities in the United States, exactly from the Gazetteers of fifty years ago!) They would seem to have considered the country either as having been asleep since that time, or as too unimportant to need later description. And yet these works profess to be "derived from the latest and best authorities." Cincinnati, a city containing 46,000 inhabitants, is not even mentioned in these works. POPULATION AND ITS CLASSES. 27 materially correct. More particular information on various points will be found in the second part of this volume, in tables, of which the following is a general summary, viz. I. The Population was- 1800, 5,309,758 1810, 7,239,903 In 1820, 9,638,166 1830, 12,856,165 1840, 17,062,666* The proportion of the different races which constitute the present population of the United States has been most incorrectly and absurdly estimated. A German paper recently asserted that of the fourteen and a half millions of whites in the United States, five millions are Germans. This is preposterous. As the census does not give any returns of national origin, it is not easy to ascertain this matter with exact precision. We have, however, the Custom-house returns of immigration; and Professor Tucker, who has elaborately analysed them, and the census itself, in a series of tables, arrives at the conclusion, that, allowing both for deficient returns, and for re-emigration to Canada and Texas, foreign emigrants and their descendants in the last fifty years have added to the population of the United States about one million. This may below the mark: but including the original French population of Louisiana and the Spanish of Florida, it is safe to conclude, from the best data, that foreigners and their descendants in the United States at present amount at the utmost to 1,500,000. [By 'foreigners' is meant all who have been adopted by the nation since it achieved its independence.] Thus leaving thirteen * Including 2,487,355 slaves. be |