[614]
duties of whites are manifest to common and honest minds, so far would I admit the first and perform the second, though the heavens fall.
I would not only advocate entire freedom, equal rights and privileges, and open competition for social distinction, but what now seems to me the shocking and downward policy of amalgamation.
But the heavens are not going to fall, and we are not going to be called upon to favor any policy discordant with natural instincts and cultivated tastes.
A case may be supposed in which the higher race ought to submit to the sad fate of dilution and debasement of its blood,—as on an island, and where long continued wrong and suffering had to be atoned for. But this is hardly conceivable, because, even in what seems punishment and atonement, the law of harmonious development still rules.
God does not punish wrong and violence done to one part of our nature, by requiring us to do wrong and violence to another part.
Even Nemesis wields rather a guiding-rod than a scourge.
We need take no step backward, but only aside, to get sooner into the right path.
Slavery has acted as a disturbing force in the development of our national character and
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Houghton, Mifflin and company, New York, Boston, 1885.
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