and extent and power of the prejudice against the negro I
quote from that distinguished writer, as he clearly expressed himself
under the heading, "_Present and Future condition of the three races
inhabiting the United States_." He said of the negro:

"I see that in a certain portion of the United States at the
present day, the legal barrier which separates the two races
is tending to fall away, but not that which exists in the
manners of the country. Slavery recedes, but the prejudice
to which it has given birth remains stationary. Whosoever
has inhabited the United States, must have perceived, that
in those parts of the United States, in which the negroes
are no longer slaves, they have in nowise drawn nearer the
whites; on the contrary, the prejudice of the race appears
to be stronger in those States which have abolished slavery,
than in those where it still exists. And, nowhere is it so
intolerant as in the states where servitude has never been
known. It is true, that in the North of the Union, marriages
may be legally contracted between negroes and whites, but
public opinion would stigmatize a man, who should content
himself with a negress, as infamous. If oppressed, they may
bring an action at law, but they will find none but whites
among their judges, and although they may legally serve as
jurors, prejudice repulses them for that office. In theatres
gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their
former masters, in hospitals they lie apart. They _are_
allowed to invoke the same divinity as the whites. The gates
of heaven are not closed against those unhappy beings; but
their inferiority is continued to the very confines of the
other world. The negro is free, but he can share, neither
the rights, nor the labor, nor the afflictions of him, whose
equal he has been declared to be, and he cannot meet him
upon fair terms in life or death."

DeTocqueville, as is seen, wrote with much bitterness and sarcasm, and,
it is but fair to state, makes no allusion to any exceptions to the
various conditions of affairs that he mentions. In all cases matters
might not have been exactly as bad as he pictures them, but as far as
the deep-seated prejudice against the negroes, and indifference to their
rights and elevation are concerned, the facts will freely sustain the
views so f