; the negroes and the whites must either
wholly part or wholly mingle. I have already expressed the conviction
which I entertain as to the latter event. *r I do not imagine that
the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal
footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the
United States than elsewhere. An isolated individual may surmount the
prejudices of religion, of his country, or of his race, and if this
individual is a king he may effect surprising changes in society; but a
whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself. A despot who should
subject the Americans and their former slaves to the same yoke, might
perhaps succeed in commingling their races; but as long as the American
democracy remains at the head of affairs, no one will undertake so
difficult a task; and it may be foreseen that the freer the white
population of the United States becomes, the more isolated will it
remain. *s

[Footnote r: This opinion is sanctioned by authorities infinitely
weightier than anything that I can say: thus, for instance, it is stated
in the "Memoirs of Jefferson" (as collected by M. Conseil), "Nothing is
more clearly written in the book of destiny than the emancipation of the
blacks; and it is equally certain that the two races will never live in
a state of equal freedom under the same government, so insurmountable
are the barriers which nature, habit, and opinions have established
between them."]

[Footnote s: If the British West India planters had governed themselves,
they would assuredly not have passed the Slave Emancipation Bill which
the mother-country has recently imposed upon them.]

I have previously observed that the mixed race is the true bond of union
between the Europeans and the Indians; just so the mulattoes are the
true means of transition between the white and the negro; so that
wherever mulattoes abound, the intermixture of the two races is not
impossible. In some parts of America, the European and the negro races
are so crossed by one another, that it is rare to meet with a man who is
entirely black, or entirely white: when they are arrived at this point,
the two races may really be said to be combined; or rather to have been
absorbed in a third race, which is connected with both without being
identical with either.

Of all the Europeans the English are those who have mixed least with the
negroes. More mulattoes are to be seen in the South of the Union than in