Mixed Race Studies

“Miscegenation” at the North.

The Southern Banner, Athens, Georgia
1864-04-20
Page 4, column 2
Source: Athens Historic Newspapers Archive (Digital Library of Georgia as part of Georgia HomePLACE)

“Miscegenation“—the new term for amalgamation, is the last and newest phase of abolitionism at the North—openly and unblushtngly avowed, and preached even from the pulpit. The New York Times makes the following remarkable confession about the matter:

WHAT ARE WE COMING TO?

A rage for marrying black people has lately taken possession of the Republican party.—The Radicals have carried everything before them and if things go on at their present rate it is feared that, in three months, every white man who is not connected by marriage with a colored family will be “read out” of the party. The gusto with which the abolitionists go into the insane movement is something at once disgusting and alarming.   We shrink from putting on paper the stories which reach us as to the prevalence pf this evil. We will only say that there will very soon be hardly a family in the city belonging to the Republican persuasion which will not be glorying in the possession of a negro son-in-law. It is said, we know not with what truth, that the Union League Club has fitted up a night bell at its door, and keeps a black minister on the premises who marries all couples of different colors at any hour of the day or night. Soon we may expect to hear of duels being fought about some black washer-women, and crowds of white men thronging the basements of those families who have colored servants in their houses for the purpose of soliciting the honor (?) of their hands.

It is with great reluctance that we speak out our minds in this matter.—But we have no hesitation in saying that if we had at the outset conceived it possible that hostility to slavery would ever have led to wholesale intermarriage with negroes, the Republican party should never have received any countenance or support from this journal. We owe it to ourselves and to posterity to say that the thing has taken us by surprise.  It never entered our head. We now see and confess our error and deplore it.

The question which now naturally suggests itself to every right-minded white man and woman is, where is this thing to end? Whither are we tending? What is to be done to stop this unnatural and detestable movement? For it is as plain as a pike staff that if it continues there will be soon no whites left in this once great and prosperous country. We shall all be mulattoes, and be afflicted with all the peculiarities, both mental and physical of that unhappy race. The signs of this great and terrible change already begin to make themselves manifest in our streets; for the most careless observer who walks down Broadway can hardly fail to observe the appearance of a vast number of faces of the well known brownish tinge. Let that tinge once become general, and then farewell, to all our whiteness.

There is but one quarter—and we are not ashamed to own if—in which, in our opinion, we can look for either help or comfort, at this crisis, and that is to the great, old, truly national Democratic party. It has its faults; nobody has been forced to call attention to them oftener than we; but it has never yet proved false to its race, and we are satisfied that whatever can be done by it will be done to preserve the purity of our blood.

Miscegenation

Banner-Watchman, Athens, Georgia
1884-02-26
page 2, column 1
Source: Athens Historic Newspapers Archive (Digital Library of Georgia as part of Georgia HomePLACE)

The New York World, in a recent article upon the marriage of Fred Douglass [to Helen Pits], has this to say upon the subject of miscegenation:

“What offense does a lady commit who marries such a man? She takes a husband with a dark skin and a little negro blood in his veins. That is the head and front of her offending. If she had married one of the many low, ignorant, white scamps who, having been kicked out of all decent circles, have found a resting-place in the public departments, her friends would not have objected. But she has chosen an intelligent, honorable, able colored man and has given a terrible shock to ‘Washington society.’ Is it not time that these prejudices against race should cease? Are they not out of place in a republican government in which all men are now happily considered ‘free and equal?'”

In reply to the World the Mobile Register says:

“If the New York World entertains such ideas as these and proposes to promulgate them, it must not be surprised if it soon comes to be considered an improper paper to be introduced into a Southern family circle. The Southern people can stand much, have stood much, but their very souls within them revolt at the idea of miscegenation. There was no occasion for the World making a comparison between Fred Douglass and ‘ignorant white scamps.’ That has nothing to do with the question involved, which is the preservation of the integrity of the white race. Mr. Pulitzer is entitled to hold whatever view he pleases, but if he seeks to force views favoring miscegenation upon the public, the Southern portion of the public will soon give him to understand that they will have none of them.”

Whereupon the Nashville Banner remarks:

“With the Register we admit that intermarriage between the races would not be endured by Southern people. But, in morals and reason, where is the greater disgrace in intermarriage than in illegitimate intercourse? We scoff and scorn the man who would take a negro woman as his wife, but accept him as a gentleman if he only keeps her as his mistress. To be consistent we should accept both as right, or reject both as wrong and disgraceful.“