of it; they are American without being democratic; and to portray
democracy has been my principal aim. It was therefore necessary to
postpone these questions, which I now take up as the proper termination
of my work.

The territory now occupied or claimed by the American Union spreads from
the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific Ocean. On the east
and west its limits are those of the continent itself. On the south it
advances nearly to the tropic, and it extends upwards to the icy regions
of the North. The human beings who are scattered over this space do not
form, as in Europe, so many branches of the same stock. Three races,
naturally distinct, and, I might almost say, hostile to each other, are
discoverable amongst them at the first glance. Almost insurmountable
barriers had been raised between them by education and by law, as well
as by their origin and outward characteristics; but fortune has brought
them together on the same soil, where, although they are mixed, they do
not amalgamate, and each race fulfils its destiny apart.

Amongst these widely differing families of men, the first which attracts
attention, the superior in intelligence, in power and in enjoyment, is
the white or European, the man pre-eminent; and in subordinate grades,
the negro and the Indian. These two unhappy races have nothing in
common; neither birth, nor features, nor language, nor habits. Their
only resemblance lies in their misfortunes. Both of them occupy an
inferior rank in the country they inhabit; both suffer from tyranny; and
if their wrongs are not the same, they originate, at any rate, with the
same authors.

If we reasoned from what passes in the world, we should almost say that
the European is to the other races of mankind, what man is to the lower
animals;--he makes them subservient to his use; and when he cannot
subdue, he destroys them. Oppression has, at one stroke, deprived the
descendants of the Africans of almost all the privileges of humanity.
The negro of the United States has lost all remembrance of his country;
the language which his forefathers spoke is never heard around him; he
abjured their religion and forgot their customs when he ceased to belong
to Africa, without acquiring any claim to European privileges. But he
remains half way between the two communities; sold by the one, repulsed
by the other; finding not a spot in the universe to call by the name
of country, except the faint image of a home w