OUR MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE LAWS. 235 



Southern such a marriage is declared absolutely void, and the parties 

 living together under it are punishable by imprisonment in the peni- 

 tentiary for " lascivious cohabitation." In these States the interna- 

 tional and interstate rule, that a marriage legally contracted in one 

 State is valid in every other State, is outraged and defied ; and parties 

 lawfully married in a State which does not prohibit the intermarriage 

 of white and colored persons removing into these States are not recog- 

 nized as husband and wife, but are made subjects of a law punishing 

 fornication and adultery. 



Before emancipation there was no legal marriage between slaves 

 a slave not being competent to enter into a contract so that the rela- 

 tion of husband and wife depended wholly upon the will and caprice 

 of the master. And the children of such marriages were neither legiti- 

 mate nor illegitimate, coming into the world independent of all mar- 

 riage laws. For this reason it would have been illogical in those States 

 to have made it a penal offense for a white man and a slave woman, 

 either through love, lustful passion, or desire of increase of property, 

 to beget children of mixed white and colored blood, though the large 

 numbers of persons of mixed color in the Southern States show that 

 it was practiced to a profitable degree. But since the conditions of 

 slavery have ceased to exist, and the freedmen have become citizens 

 of the United States, endowed by the Constitution with all the polit- 

 ical and civil rights enjoyed by their former masters, including the 

 natural right of marriage, the reasons upon which the former black 

 laws were based can have no application to the present social rights 

 of these people. Still, the prejudice, deeply rooted in the interest of 

 slavery, exists ; and the cases recently before the Supreme Court under 

 the civil-rights law, to test the constitutionality of the State laws pun- 

 ishing marriage between white and colored persons, have been decided 

 on collateral issues in favor of that prejudice. Thus the laws of sev- 

 eral States and the ruling of the highest tribunal in the land interrupt 

 the natural law of selection and development. But the question is not 

 at rest ; it must be met met as it now is, and as it will appear in the 

 future. And if those States and the courts will not respond to the de- 

 mands of the higher civilization of the age which recognizes this fun- 

 damental social law, Congress should clearly recognize and define the 

 equal married rights of the citizens of the United States in the District 

 of Columbia and the Territories, without regard to "race, color, or 

 previous condition of servitude." 



According to the last census, the population of the United States is 

 reported at fifty millions, in round numbers. The report is very exact 

 in giving the age, sex, and place of birth of each individual, native 

 and foreign, and much other information valuable to the student of 

 ethnology and the migration of peoples. But it is neglectful of one of 

 the most important questions of races. It divides thepopulation into 

 two races, " white " and " colored," giving the number of the former 



