orresponding power of the
dominant race to prevent, at least in large degree, similar physical
marriages between Negroes and the women of their race, we may be said
rightly to infer that the proportion of white mothers of colored
offspring to white fathers was then, as it has always been, very
small. In Maryland, according to Brackett, the child of a white father
and a mulatto slave could not give testimony in court against a white
person, whereas the child of a white mother and a black man would be
disqualified in this regard only during his term of service.[55] "A
free mulatto was good evidence," says he, "against a white
person."[56] The mulatto of Tennessee had no such social or legal
position as either of these cases indicate, although here again
personal testimony brings to light notable exceptions of the social
behavior of individuals in certain localities, where this type, that
is, the colored offspring of white motherhood, was regarded as a
separate class, above the ordinary person of color.[57]

It is likely that in East Tennessee there was considerable prevalence
of such amalgamation of African and Scotch-Irish race stocks, with
white motherhood.[58] The reasons were largely economic. Many of the
whites who came to live in the lower farm lands down from their first
holdings on the rocky slopes and unfertile soil, were driven from
these more productive lowlands by the rich white land owners who
preferred to have large plantations with great numbers of blacks to
raise the crops, rather than to rent or sell to small farmers. For
these poorer white neighbors there was no recourse but to take to the
mountains and to cultivate there the less desirable lands. The life
they had to live was necessarily very rough and hard; their principal
diet was corn, and often the rocky soil only yielded them that
grudgingly and scantily. They frequently came in contact with the
slaves, and the latter were known to steal provisions from their
masters' storehouses and bring to these hill-country people appetizing
additions to their meager provisions. And the slaves were also known
to mingle with them in the quilting, husking, barn-raisings, and other
rural festivities, being undoubtedly made welcome. It requires no
immoderate imagination to state here the likelihood of much racial
intermixure, as we know, from testimony, of more than a few specific
cases, and we have, in this rather strange way, the account of social
intermingling