US Presidency
1866

By the statutes of some of the States, Northern as well as Southern, it is enacted, for instance, that no white person shall intermarry with a Negro or mulatto. Chancellor Kent says, speaking of the blacks, Marriages between them and the whites are forbidden in some of the States where slavery does not exist, and they are prohibited in all the slaveholding States; and when not absolutely contrary to law, they are revolting, and regarded as an offense against public decorum. I do not say that this bill repeals State laws on the subject of marriage between the two races, for as the whites are forbidden to intermarry with the blacks, the blacks can only make such contracts as the whites themselves are allowed to make, and therefore can not under this bill enter into the marriage contract with the whites.