Mixed Race Studies

A clerical correspondent writes us from the Southern coast protesting against the rapid tendency to amalgamation…

Franklin Repository
1863-12-09
page 4, column 4

Source: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library

A clerical correspondent writes us from the Southern coast protesting against the rapid tendency to amalgamation. He says that he has been called upon to perform the marriage service repeatedly where the bride was mulatto, quadroon or octoroon, and he calls upon Congress to arrest this unnatural mingling of the races, which, to use his own language, “threatens the annihilation of the white race in the United States.”

We beg our correspondent to quiet his fears on the subject. He cites some half a dozen cases to vindicate his apprehensions; but not one of them presents the union of a northern man with the southern negress. All the happy grooms were either southerners or foreigners, and they have been adopting no novel social system. Slavery has never fastened its desolation on any land without carrying the social evil of amalgamation with it; and the crime has been peculiar to the chivalric and opulent rather than to the lowly. Had our correspondent cast a thought as to the origin of the mulatto, quadroon and octoroon brides of whom he speaks, he might have cherished a reasonable suspicion that amalgamation is not just dawning upon the world, but has blotted and blurred the whole social organization of the South ever since slavery came with its endless train of crime.

In the North, where the negro race is free and not the legitimate prey of a brutal master’s lust, amalgamation is very rare, and embraces only the most abandoned of both sexes; and we regard the destruction of Slavery as the only hope of dealing a death-blow to that unnatural evil. Slavery has been its parent, its shield, its apologist and stripped it of its hideous moral deformity by bringing virtuous wives and daughters and sensual sons in daily contact with it; and when its great foundation is destroyed, the whole structure of social pollution will fall with it. The remedy is not in Congress, but in the moral tone of the people, and that seems to be progressing well toward a better and brighter Nationality, free from the blistering stains of both legalized and lawless mingling of the distance races of the Continent.

The Democracy and “Niggers”

Franklin Repository
1859-04-20
page 5, column 6
Source: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library

Summary: Attacks the Southern Democracy’s supposed distaste for “niggers,” and notes their close quarters with blacks at home, including the propagation of “half-niggers.”

Full Text of Article:

—Hon. Owen Lovejoy, of Illinois, in a recent speech in the House of Representatives, thus describes a party which is not so strong in the country as it once was:

“The Slavery Democracy prates and chaters about ‘negro equality, ‘Black Republicans,’ and ‘nigger stealing,’ to use its classic phrase and improved orthography. It has or affects to have, a great horror of ‘niggers.’ And any one who advocates the principles of human Freedom, as they were enunciated and laid down in enduring forms by the Fathers of the Republic, is a ‘woolly head,’ and these same Democrats have learned to speak of them with a peculiar nasal twist. You would suppose that these gentlemen, whose olfactories are so sensitive and acute, never saw a nigger except in a menagerie. And yet, would you believe it! the very first service rendered to him on earth is performed by a nigger; as an infant, he draws the milk, which makes his flesh and blood and bones, from the breast of a nigger; looks up in her face and smiles, and calls her by the endearing name of ‘mammy,’ and begs, perhaps, in piteous tones, for the privilege of carrying ‘mammy’ to the Territories; he is undressed and put to bed by a nigger, and nestles during the slumbers of infancy in the bosom of a nigger; he is washed, dressed and taken to the table by a nigger, to eat food prepared by a nigger; he is led to school by a nigger; every service that childhood demands is performed by a nigger, except that of chastisement, which, from the absence of good manners in many cases, it is to be feared is not performed at all. When down appears on his lip, the tonsorial service is performed by a nigger; and when he reaches manhood, he invades the nigger quarters, to place himself in the endearing relation of paternity to half niggers. Finally, if he should be ambitious, it may occur that he will come to congress to represent a constituency, three-fifths of whom are niggers, and talk about ‘Black Republicans,’ ‘amalgamation,’ ‘nigger equality,’ ‘nigger stealing,’ and the offensive odor of niggerism.”

Governor Northen says that miscegenation by law will never, take place in the south. But miscegenation in the south has already taken place. It has been on the road over 200 years. Not miscegenation by law, but by brute force, which is the very worst form of law. Who started it? Not the negroes, I am sure, nor was it the poor white trash. It was the blue vein aristocracy of the south that broke over the fence, defied all law, and the result is we have black negroes and white negroes, some of them as white as Governor Northen.

Joseph W. Henderson, “An Answer to Northen: The Son of a Slave Mother on Southern Miscegenation,” The Daily Star (via: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library), June 19, 1899, page 1 (column 1). http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=H9AwAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WooDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5707%2C959988

Speaking of morals, you asked me what effect the female population of mixed blood was going to have on society here [in Charleston, South Carolina]. I have looked somewhat into the matter since my return, from what I can learn, I believe there is hardly a young man here of Southern birth, who can afford the expense, who does not protect one of these girls, and few married men who have not two families. Miscegenation is practiced here. I know of nearly a dozen cases where the parties are married. These girls are many of them beautiful, many almost pure white, with blue eyes and light hair, of fine figures and lady-like appearance. Many of them are much whiter than the majority of pure whites, who seem to belong to the order of women known as scraggy, and are the color of a liver colored pointer, having tan colored paws and faces. But few children are born where these girls are protected by single men, while some of the old men have larger colored families. Nothing can be done to rectify this evil, as these girls will not on any account marry a man with a drop of “nigger blood” in his veins.

“Life in the South,” Franklin Repository (via: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library), January 23, 1867, 2 (column 3). http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/news/fr1867/pa.fr.fr.1867.01.23.xml#02

Statistics On Miscegenation

Franklin Repository
1864-04-27
page 1, column 6

Source: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library

Summary: The Repository details the disproportionate number of “mulattoes” in the South relative to the North.

Full Text of Article:

There were 411,613 mulatto slaves in the south in 1840, of whom 69,979 were in Virginia; 43,281 in Kentucky, and 36,900 in Georgia. These numbers are considerably beyond the legitimate proportion of those States. There were also 176,739 free mulattoes in the United States in 1860, of whom 106,770 belonged to the south, and 69,969 to the free States. Of the free mulattoes Virginia contained 23,485, which number, added to her slave mulattoes makes a total of miscegenated population of 93,824. Her mulatto slaves alone exceeded the total number of mulattoes in the free States.

The whole number of mulattoes, slave and free, in the Union, in 1860, was 588,352, of whom 69,969 belonged to the free States, and 518,383 to the slave States—a number greater than the combined white population of Arkansas, Delaware and Florida—greater than the white population of Maryland—almost twice as great as that of South Carolina, and twice as great as the combined populations of Delaware and Florida. The mulatto population of Virginia alone exceeds the number of whites in Delaware or Florida.

(No Title)

Franklin Repository
1863-12-09
page 4, Column 4

Source: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library

Summary: Argues that “amalgamation” is common in the South and “very rare” in the North. A Southern correspondent concerned with the number of mixed marriages occurring wanted “amalgamation” outlawed. The Repository claims that the grooms are Southerners or foreigners because “amalgamation” is no stranger to a social system that includes slavery. In the free North, on the other hand, mixed marriages are “very rare.”

Full Text of Article:

A clerical correspondent writes us from the Southern coast protesting against the rapid tendency to amalgamation. He says that he has been called upon to perform the marriage service repeatedly where the bride was mulatto, quadroon or octoroon, and he calls upon Congress to arrest this unnatural mingling of the races, which, to use his own language, “threatens the annihilation of the white race in the United States.”

We beg our correspondent to quiet his fears on the subject. He cites some half a dozen cases to vindicate his apprehensions; but not one of them presents the union of a northern man with the southern negress. All the happy grooms were either southerners or foreigners, and they have been adopting no novel social system. Slavery has never fastened its desolation on any land without carrying the social evil of amalgamation with it; and the crime has been peculiar to the chivalric and opulent rather than to the lowly. Had our correspondent cast a thought as to the origin of the mulatto, quadroon and octoroon brides of whom he speaks, he might have cherished a reasonable suspicion that amalgamation is not just dawning upon the world, but has blotted and blurred the whole social organization of the South ever since slavery came with its endless train of crime.

In the North, where the negro race is free and not the legitimate prey of a brutal master’s lust, amalgamation is very rare, and embraces only the most abandoned of both sexes; and we regard the destruction of Slavery as the only hope of dealing a death-blow to that unnatural evil. Slavery has been its parent, its shield, its apologist and stripped it of its hideous moral deformity by bringing virtuous wives and daughters and sensual sons in daily contact with it; and when its great foundation is destroyed, the whole structure of social pollution will fall with it. The remedy is not in Congress, but in the moral tone of the people, and that seems to be progressing well toward a better and brighter Nationality, free from the blistering stains of both legalized and lawless mingling of the distance races of the Continent.

A Very Sad Occurrence

Staunton Vindicator
1869-08-27
page 3, Column 2

Source: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library

Summary: The paper prints an account of the killing of Jacob Scherer by John Stanley. Stanley had been co-habiting with a woman of mixed race. Scherer led a party to break up the union. They broke into the house and Stanley shot Scherer in the process. Stanley was arrested for murder. The article includes a transcript of the testimony before the grand-jury.

(Names in announcement: Jacob Scherer, John B. Scherer Sr., John Stanley, Ginnie Sorrel, Clinedinst, Anderson, Dr. B. B. Donaghe, James Gilmore, Joseph Ryan, Trayer, N. S. White, Dr. Fauntleroy, J. T. Parrent, Robert Campbell, M. G. Harman)

Full Text of Article:

Our people were startled, about midnight Saturday night last, by the announcement that Jacob Scherer, third son of Jno. B. Scherer, Sr., had been killed by Mr. John Stanley.

Jacob Scherer was a young, unmarried man, about twenty years of age, full of fun, sociable, of an amiable disposition, which caused all our people to esteem him highly, and it may well be imagined, that the announcement that he had been cut down, in the vigor of life, caused a thrill of pain in the very breast of every one.

Mr. Stanley is a man of middle age, with a wife and one child, a son, about 15 or 16 years old, and was regarded as a steady, quiet, well-meaning man.

The circumstances attending the killing are as follows:

A party of some eight or ten young men, learning that Mr. Stanley was co-habiting with a mulatto girl, named Ginnie Sorrel, blacked their faces and went to her house, on Market Street, Saturday night last, for the purpose of breaking up the illicit connexion. Several entered the house and immediately a pistol was fired, killing Jacob Scherer, almost instantly.

Mr. Stanley was identified by several of the party present, as the one who fired the shot, and was arrested, at his house, about two hours after and lodged in jail.

The examination of the case was entered into before Justices Pearce, Clinedinst and Anderson, on Tuesday morning last. We give below a synopsis of the testimony of the witnesses examined…

Read the entire article here.

The American Race

Semi-Weekly Dispatch
Franklin County, Virginia
1861-05-17
page 1, Column 3

Source: Valley of the Shadow: Civil War Era Newspapers, University of Virginia Library

Summary: Reasons that America’s population has increased by one-third in the past ten years because of the intermarriage in the United States of the races of Celts, Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, and North American Indians. This mixing of the races has made the “stock” more “vigorous” and will ultimately produce a peculiar “American race,” which will exhibit the different positive characteristics of all these distinct peoples.

Full Text of Article:

The present census reveals the astonishing fact that the population of the United States has increased thirty-three per cent, within the last ten years. The Roman Empire, approaching the culmination of its power, increased about thirty per cent each hundred years, but no nation in recorded times has afforded any parallel to the advancement of our own. Spain has been depopulating for a thousand years; England is not three times more populous than three centuries ago, and Italy is no more important numerically than she was in the days of Pliny; but within three quarters of a country the population of the United States has risen from three to thirty millions. It is a common error to attribute this vast increase to immigration from foreign countries; but of the twenty-three millions enumerated in ’50, not three millions were of foreign birth. Vast as the annual immigration is, it bears no proportion to the yearly increase by birth, which in itself, independent of immigration, averages thirty per cent, every ten years of the present century. This wonderful fecundity is not unexplained by physical law; it is observed that in populous countries of Europe where the same people continually intermarry, the increase is comparatively insignificant; on the same principle the aristocracy of England is observed to diminish rather than multiply, because interest and pride confine people to intermarriage to people of the same race, and often within the circle of consanguinity. But in the United States various races amalgamate; the stock becomes more vigorous, there is less of disease and early death, and the population consequently increases with a prodigious ratio… …It is computed that at least one-third of the population of the U. States are descendants of the Puritans, who were Anglo-Saxons; this strong-willed, enterprising and indomitable race, intermingling with others, has preserved ascendancy and produced a people superior in physical strength and in those attributes of mind most required in the rapid development of the great Empire of the West. Humiliating as the institution of any analogy may appear to man of the immortal mind, he must submit to the laws governing the rest of animal creation in which the union of distinct stocks produces improvement. Some of the finest examples of physical beauty have resulted from the intermarriage of Europeans and North American Indians; and, indeed, instances are not wanting where the offspring has been endowed with wonderful intellectual strength…

Read the entire article here.