"All the Congresses on earth can't make the negro anything else than what he is; he must be subject to the white man, or he must amalgamate or be destroyed. Two such races cannot live in harmony, save as master and slave. Mexico shows the result of general equality and amalgamation, and the Indians give a fair illustration of the fate of negroes if they are released from the control of the whites."[[240]]
William H. Seward, speaking at Detroit, Michigan, September 4th, 1860, said:
"The great fact is now fully realized that the African race here is a foreign and feeble element, like the Indians, incapable of assimilation, ... and that it is a pitiful exotic, unwisely and unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation of the native vineyard."[[241]]
Let us turn to the more hopeful and yet halting conclusions of Abraham Lincoln. In his speech at Quincy, Illinois, October 15th, 1858, in the Lincoln-Douglas Debate, he said:
"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, would probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position."[[242]]
In the same debate at Charleston, Ill., September 18th, 1858, he had said:
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about, in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."[[243]]
How unsatisfactory would be the status of the two races in a state where such conditions obtained, Mr. Lincoln must have appreciated, and so, as we have seen, he turned to the colonization of the negroes as the real solution of the problem.