The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1864-03-14
The Mixing of the Races---WhO and What
favors il!

alarmed lest the progress OF Liberty should
result in the amalgamation of the black and
white races, producing an intermediate shade
They hold up their hands in holy horror
and talk about "niscegeRdtion !" an unpro-
nounceable word found in no English die
tionary-a word, we are obliged to confess,
that we never saw until we found it in the
Advertiser and Argus, and word, we further
confess, the meaning of which we do not I'M
derstand except as we infer it from the
connection in which it Is found. However
much it may expose our own Ignorance We
make this confession, for ignorance like pow
erty, however inconvenient, is by no means
necessarily sinful.
We presume the word is used to indicate
mixture of blood, as between the black man
and his light-skinned fellow, or, in plain Anglo
Saxon, the natural result and product OF
amalgamation. Without stopping to inquire
to what extent an ordinary copperhead would
suffer from having his veins injected with
blood from an honest and patriotic negro, we
ask the attention OF the reader to few facts
showing who, what persons, what kind of
political economists, what sections Of the
country and what conditions of life have been
found practically most favorable to the mixing
Of blood, or the ''miscegenation" which, all of
asudden, has become so fearful in the estima-
ton Of political saints of the Fernando Wood
and copperhead persuasion. Theories are of
little value Practical facts are what we
want. And we undertake to say that the
most indubitabe facts show Slavery to have
been, and now to be, the great promoter of
amalgamation, and that where this hellish
institution has had the widest sway there,
precisely, is where the barriers which have
kept the dark and the white blood in their re-
speciiye channels, have been most edectually
broken down; and why should it not be SO,
considering that slavery abolshes marriage,
abolishes the family, and takes from the slave
woman all legal protection, as itNdoes from
lust all restraint, and exposes her to brutality
and insult?
In the House of Representatives, Feb. %,
when the bill TO establish Bureau of Freed
mems Affairs was under consideration, Mr.
'Sunset" Cox, of ohio-a patriarch in the
Copperhead church-deyoted an hour to crit
icisms of certain utterances of Wendell Phil
lips and Theodore Titon, and the reading of
copious extracts from an anonymous pamphlet
recently published by Dexter, Hamilton &
Co., Nassau street, New York, entitled mis-
cegenation."
To this TRADE of Mr.. Cox, appropriate reply
was made by Hon. VIM. ID. Kelley, of Penn,
(Philadelphia) which contained facts and fig
ures from official and other sources, to which
we invite attention, and which we trust may
be thrown in the teeth Of every misnamed
democrat who impudently attempts to fix the
stigma of encouraging amalgimatlon upon
those who would render practical obedience
to the golden rule by conceding to the black
man the same political rights which they
claim for themselves. We cannot make Mr.
Kelley's battery more effective than by giving
his own words. He said, referring to those
who opposed the bill before the House:
None know better than those gentlemen
that one half million of the slaves are the
near relatives, the uncles, aunts, and cousins,
brothers, sisters, and children OF the Democ-
racy of the South that In the veins of that
number OF colored people tingles the blood of
what the gentlemen have been pleased to con-
slider the master race OF this country. The
gentleman intimated that, by reason of the
utterances TO which he referred, he was salts
fed that the Republicans and abotionists of
the North would fall into the practice OF ANAL
gamation. Sir, he knows very well that the
complaint of the alleged illegal and unconsti-
tutional arrest of that specimen of southern
chivalry, that representative Of Virginia man
ners and morals, that leader of the New York
Democracy, Captain J. U. Andrews, is not
their real grievance in the premises. He
knows very well that their real grievance.
and that out OF which they expected to make
most capital while they hoped 10 restore
slavery TO its old political power, is that when
the officers tore that husband of a white
woman ruthlessy from the swetering embrace
of his African iRdmordtd they violated Dem
ocratic usages Yes, sir; this is their real
cause Of complaint in the premises.
1t is not the men of the North who have
been enamored by that complexion which is
described as the Swallowed livery of the
burning SUM- 1t is not the men of the North
who have laid their Snowy hands" in "palms
OF russell" or have "hung Europe's priceless
pearl that shames the Orient on Afric's swar-
thy neck" He has never seen the white
northern man choose his companion from that
race. have by me a picture of a band of
slaves sent North by General Banks, four oil
whom are as white as We who hold this dis
cussion. They come from the colored schools
recently established in New Orleans They
are children of southern Democrats; born in
Virginia and Louisiana, they were owned or
cold by their fathers as negro slaves.
But few weeks ago, in conversation with
a distinguished son OF Kentucky, himself
Shareholder, upon the question now under
discussion, he said 10 me that In l849, he was
at a school at Danyille, Kentucky that there
were there on an average three hundred
young men, and that though the colored pop
ulation of the town numbered six hundred
there were but six of pure African blood. The
scholars of that school were not northern alb
olitionists or Republicans. They were the
wealthy and educated young gentlemen of
the democratic South.
But sir, let this question not rest upon iso-
lated instances or narrow localities. Let us
look at the census of 1860. / find by it
that more than half a million Of the colored
people OF that section are as | have already
intimated, the kindred OF the white race ofthe
South. Thus in Louisiana, of the free colored
people, el29 per cent. are of mixed blood,
while in Pennsylvania only 1861 are of mixed
blood. And here let me say the latter are
nearly all of Southern birth. | remember
while litigation was pending in our courts be-
tween two colored natives of Charleston there
were on one occasion about fifty witnesses In
court. Some of my colleagues remember the
occasion. The contest was between Robert J.
Douglass and Wilkinson Jones, and among
the fifty witnesses, all of whom were natives
ofCharleston, South Carolina, and its immedi-
ate vicinity there was not black or one
white man. Thew were all of mixed blood