use he might engage
the protection of his wife's master in time of need.[87] On the other hand
the free colored women were somewhat numerously the prostitutes, or in more
favored cases the concubines, of white men. At New Orleans and thereabouts
particularly, concubinage, along with the well known "quadroon balls," was
a systematized practice.[88] When this had persisted for enough generations
to produce children of less than octoroon infusion, some of these doubtless
cut their social ties, changed their residence, and made successful though
clandestine entrance into white society. The fairness of the complexions of
some of those who to this day take the seats assigned to colored passengers
in the street cars of New Orleans is an evidence, however, that "crossing
the line" has not in all such breasts been a mastering ambition.

[Footnote 87: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. 130-133.]

[Footnote 88: Albert Phelps, _Louisiana_ (Boston, 1905), pp. 212, 213.]

The Southern whites were of several minds regarding the free colored
element in their midst. Whereas laboring men were more or less jealously
disposed on the ground of their competition, the interest and inclination
of citizens in the upper ranks was commonly to look with favor upon those
whose labor they might use to advantage. On public grounds, however, these
men shared the general apprehension that in case tumult were plotted, the
freedom of movement possessed by these people might if their services were
enlisted by the slaves make the efforts of the whole more formidable. One
of the Charleston pamphleteers sought to discriminate between the mulattoes
and the blacks in the premises, censuring the indolence and viciousness
of the latter while praising the former for their thrift and sobriety and
contending that in case of revolt they would be more likely to prove allies
of the whites.[89] This distinction, however, met no general adoption. The
general discussion at the South in the premises did not concern the
virtues and vices of the colored freemen on their own score so much as the
influence exerted by them upon the slaves. It is notable in this connection
that the Northern dislike of negro newcomers from the South on the ground
of their prevalent ignorance, thriftlessness and instability[90] was more
than matched by the Southern dread of free negroes from the North. A
citizen of New Orleans wrote characteristically as early as 1819:[91]
"It is a m