I do
firmly believe that the recurrence of the former evil becomes rarer
every day, for advance of civilization only seems to strengthen the
natural repugnance--with which moral sentiment has nothing to
do--existing between the Anglo-Saxon and African blood.
The subject is not a pleasant one to dilate upon, but that such a
repugnance does exist, few that have been brought into actual contact
with the "colored" element _en masse_, will be inclined to deny. I think
some of those scientific philosophers who write volumes to prove that
there is no physical difference between the races, would feel their
theories strangely modified after such a practical trial. If this be an
immutable fact, it may work in the South for the prevention of evil as
well as of good; in the North it can only work for bitter harm. In
Delaware, where the free negroes are found in unusually large
proportions to the whites, they are notoriously more hardly treated than
in any other State of the original Union; and fanaticism must be blind
and deaf indeed if recent events in New York have not taught it to doubt
whether the tender mercies of the Abolitionists are so gentle, after
all. While things are so (and there is scant hope of their changing
within many generations) the position of the black freedman in the North
will never be much higher than that of the Chinese in California, where
a scintilla of civil rights is the utmost that the unhappy aliens can
claim.
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