Southern dread of amalgamation is not to be scouted as a mere bugbear. Think of the half-breeds that lined all the border between the States and the Indians; of how the whites have mixed with native races in Mexico, Central and South America; of white and negro intermingling in Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, in the United States, and especially in the south. Think of whites and negroes now legally married and marrying in the neighboring States of the Union. In 1902, eight white women were living with negro husbands in Xenia, Ohio;[148] and there were children of all these mixed marriages except one.[149] Consider also that prominent negroes advocate these marriages. Douglass had a white wife. He preached that the American negro must set before himself assimilation as his true goal. Professor DuBois is really a disciple of Douglass, as appears from some of his utterances. We give in a footnote what another prominent negro has recently said in public.[150] The moment that the negro became an influential factor in southern politics, a real agitation against the anti-intermarriage laws would begin. There would come a small number of negroes, controlling votes, of so much property and respectability that their children would be regarded as eligible matches by some of the poorer and more destitute whites. Marriages between such, solemnized on a visit to a State permitting, would occur. And our laws last mentioned would be more and more evaded and their repeal become gradually more probable. When they had won political equality with the patricians, the Roman plebeians repealed the prohibition of intermarriage which the former had stubbornly maintained. These two orders were of the same race. Therefore intermarriage could not be the boon to the plebeians that it would now be to the southern negro, lifting him up as it would do. If he has opportunity, he will struggle for it more resolutely than the plebeians did. A small number of negroes have already been assimilated in America, and a few more are still to be assimilated, as I shall explain later on. This sure deliverance from the destruction which now threatens is more and more sought after by the intelligent few. And if the vote of the negroes was allowed to count, it would not be long until, under the example and appeal of their leaders, all of them would be making for that haven of refuge. Mongrelism beats upon the border all around the south; it threatens to burst forth from an exhaustless source within. We know we must keep it out as Holland does the ocean. Subconsciously discerning that fusion would probably follow the entrance of the negro into government, the whites have made of the race primary and other measures de facto disfranchising him, dikes against the filthy waters of mongrelism which they would not have to wash over themselves. This is not because we hate the negro. We love and cherish him. It is not to be demanded of us that we sacrifice ourselves, our children, and our children’s children for his sake. We will gladly do all that friends—nay, that near relatives—can with justice ask of one another, to better his condition and rescue him. We cannot give him political power at the cost of our degeneration.
I would enforce the foregoing contents of this section with these profoundly true and very forcible words of a northern man, now residing in Columbia, South Carolina:
“A word about race hatred, race revulsion, or race antipathy. Many people in the north believe the devil is the author of it, and some people in the south are more devoted to it than to religion. Race antipathy is really a race instinct, a moral anti-toxin developed by nature in the individual whose environment involves constant and close contact with an inferior race in large numbers. It works for the salvation of the purity of the superior race.”[151]
Professor DuBois says that “legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution.”[152] And some writers seem to think it would be well to coerce miscegenators to legitimate their relations by intermarrying. An innocent girl—a maid—undone; all good men and women are agreed that her seducer should be made to marry her.[153] But that is only where the marriage would be tolerated by society. Thus it would not make man and wife of parties to an incestuous liaison. No moralist contends that one who has received a favor from a public woman is under obligation to become her husband. The miscegenation common is that between white men and promiscuous black women. How idle is the attempt to put these cases on a par with that of the ruin of a virtuous woman. And Professor DuBois could not have rightly weighed the words in which he represents them to be as criminal as those horrible offences which especially provoke lynching; that is, that the negro woman who consented most willingly to the embraces of her master was as foully wronged by him as her mistress would be by a slave who outraged her against her will.[154] No. Intermarriage of these mixed lovers is not demanded by any principle of justice. But the public weal does demand that such a tremendous evil as amalgamation be kept off by the surest and most decisive measures. It is playing with plague and curse unspeakable for us of the south to permit the existence of any condition which tends even in the slightest degree to legalize intermarriage.[155]
3. Writers still under the spell of the root-and-branch abolitionists who were wont to exalt Toussaint, the Haytian general, above our Washington, strain hard to conceal the real cause of the lamentable conditions now prevailing in Hayti and San Domingo. One tells us that because of the many mountains, there being no railroad system, separate communities are defended by almost impregnable natural barriers, and as neighboring peoples are hereditary enemies, there is always war somewhere. The remedy recommended is to build railroads in the island as the English have done in Jamaica. Another writer tells us that we must not jump to the conclusion that all the inhabitants of San Domingo are degraded negroes; that while the population of the interior are sunk in ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, yet in the capital and the coast towns there are some people of apparently lily-white strain, well educated, speaking two or three languages, who supply the mulatto republic with generals and political leaders. The masses of these Dominicans are very patriotic, and would indeed do finely if they were not divided into hostile parties by self-seeking agitators. And you may consult many others who keep back the real explanation. There is one cardinal fact which stands forth in the history of Hayti as prominently as slavery does in the train of American events which brought on the brothers’ war. It is this: soon after the outbreak of the French revolution the mulattoes were accorded political privileges, and then a little later—it was in 1794—France equalized the negroes of her colonies just freed with the whites in political and civil rights. This made the negroes of Hayti, who were in intelligence and development somewhat below those of the south when the latter were emancipated, full-fledged self-governing republicans. The whites were but few. What of them were not massacred at once by the blacks fled for their lives. The history of both the Haytian and the Dominican republic (the latter achieving its independence in 1844) is the same. Their people make a hell on earth of the most beautiful and fertile of islands. As slavery was plainly the cause of the southern confederacy, the grant of political power to the mulattoes and negroes not at all qualified to use it is just as plainly the cause and sole author of chronic civil war and anarchy in Hayti and San Domingo.
This enfranchisement of semi-barbarians was from the ’prentice hand of a new republic, without any experience in free institutions. The English did far better when they emancipated the Jamaica negro by the act of 1833. They gave him full protection of his liberty, person, and contract and property rights. Five sixths of the 800,000 of its present population are colored people or blacks. These—to quote the Encyclopedia Americana—“have no share in the government whatever.” It further says: “The Jamaica negroes are fairly good laborers when well fed; the menial work of the island is performed by them, and they are regarded as cheerful, honest, and respectful servants.”
This happy condition of quiet and content is not due to the fact that the railroads prevent settlement of the negroes in separate neighboring communities to quarrel and fight with one another; but it is because the English never allowed them to get the taste of blood as the French permitted to their brothers in Hayti; they have not been incited by unseasonable political power to license and riot.
The negroes of Jamaica are evidently bettering in condition slowly. They need only enough of Booker Washingtons to rise much faster. I beg attention to this comparison of Jamaica and Hayti, made by a well-informed negro, a native of the former, who lived there until some nine years ago, and who has lately lived several years in Hayti:[156]
“They [the negroes of Jamaica] aim at rising, but many make the mistake of not rising, in but out of labor: the most intelligent flock to the professions, civil service, &c. Few turn their steps to what is for the real upbuilding of the country, agriculture, that for which it is best adapted.
“The people of Hayti and San Domingo are of a political turn of mind, and sacrifice everything for politics, or are made to do so. That island produces as fine coffee and cocoa as can be found anywhere, but the most intelligent keep out and deprive these crops of scientific cultivation.”