of skin, such as prevails in the United States, we are not long in
discovering that it rests in great part on a misunderstanding: men
mistake coexistence for amalgamation. I do not fear to affirm that the
second would be as undesirable as the first would be desirable. Why
dream of blending or of assimilating the two races? Why pursue as an
ideal frequent marriages between them, and the formation of a third
race: that of mulattoes? America does right to resist such ideas, and to
inscribe her testimony against such a future, evidently very little in
conformity with the designs of God.

But coexistence by no means draws amalgamation in its train. On this
point, also, experience has spoken. In the English colonies, the liberty
of the blacks is entire, the legal equality of the two races is not
contested, public manners have shaped themselves to that mutual
consideration without which they could not live together; yet neither
amalgamation nor assimilation is in question, and the aristocracy of
skin remains what it should be, a lasting distinction, accepted on both
sides, between races which are not designed to mingle together. I do not
know that many marriages are contracted between the whites and the
negresses of Jamaica, and I believe that the class of mulattoes
increases much more rapidly under slavery than with liberty. Look in
this respect at what takes place even now in the United States: as
quadroons sell better than blacks, mixtures, of white or almost white
slaves abound there, and the unhappy women who refuse to lend themselves
to certain combinations are often whipped in punishment.

With liberty, each race can at least remain by itself; with it, there
can be coexistence without amalgamation; both mingling and hostility can
be prevented. This is the more easy, inasmuch as the negroes, with the
gentleness of their race, willingly accept the second place, and by no
means demand what we insist on refusing them. Let their liberty be
complete, let legal equality and friendly relations be maintained, and
they will ask no more.

But they will ask no less, and they are right. I do not understand, in
truth, why so harmless a co-existence should be so long repulsed by the
enlightened people of the United States. There are negroes in Spanish
America who have reached the highest grades of the army, and who show as
much intelligence, decorum, and dignity in command as white men could
do. I myself have seen at Paris, a clergy