CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. HOWE. 615 



produced monstrous deformities of a bodily as 

 well as moral nature, for it has impaired the 

 purity and lowered the quality of the national 

 blood. It imported Africans, and, to prevent 

 their extinction by competition with a more 

 vigorous race, it set a high premium on col- 

 ored blood. It has fostered and multiplied a 

 vigorous black race, and engendered a feeble 

 mulatto breed. Many of each of these classes 

 have drifted northward, right in the teeth 

 of thermal laws, to find homes where they 

 would never live by natural election. Now, 

 by utterly rooting out slavery, and by that 

 means alone, shall we remove these disturbing 

 forces and allow fair play to natural laws, by 

 the operation of which, it seems to me, the 

 colored population will disappear from the 

 Northern and Middle States, if not from the 

 continent, before the more vigorous and pro- 

 lific white race. It will be the duty of the 

 statesman to favor, by wise measures, the op- 

 eration of these laws and the purification and 

 elevation of the national blood. 



In the way of this is the existence of the 

 colored population of the Northern and Mid- 

 dle States. Now, while we should grant to 

 every human being all the rights we claim for 

 ourselves, and bear in mind the cases of indi- 



