Page:Why colored people in Philadelphia are excluded from the street cars.djvu/27

 South, on both sides, impelled by an irrepressible orgasm, they should rush together. There are, in round numbers, 26,000,000 of white and 4,000,000 of colored people in the United States; and after every Black had found a White, there would remain 22,000,000 of Whites still unmated. These, by necessity, would carry on the pure white population, and they might safely be left, without help, to sustain themselves in the struggle of race, against the 8,000,000 of the amalgamationists. But here it is asserted, they will receive aid from a distinct source. According to the theory of Doctors Nott and Cartwright, the mixed race rapidly decays, and after three generations dies out. This theory is accepted by those who fear amalgamation, and is often quoted by them, as an argument against the theory of equal rights. They also hate negroes and would be glad to see their numbers less. But pure-blooded negroes, it is generally conceded, possess great vitality of race and are killed off with difficulty. This difficulty, it seems, can be overcome by amalgamation. By this process, in one generation, all these negroes become mulattoes, and this once accomplished, the whole African race is in a fair way to disappear from the land. These advocates for pure white blood have been defeating their own purpose. Let them reverse their policy and encourage, for a time, the amalgamation they have hitherto opposed, and, with patience, they can have a white man's government yet.

This proposition is less extravagant than are these insane and wicked fears of impending amalgamation;—wicked, because they are made the excuse, by the race which has the entire preventive control of the matter, for maltreating colored people and denying them rights which are accorded, without dispute, to every other man and woman in the country.

But these people will never come to such an end as this; and if it is true that amalgamation, here, leads towards it, then here, to any considerable extent, it will never take place. They were never made the valuable element of our population, which they are, simply to die out. The greater part of the work which has yet been done on a large portion of this continent has been done