CHAP. XIX.] MIXTURE OF RACES. 271 



faith, with whom formerly, throughout the northern and free 

 states, they had so intimate a connection ; and as for the slaves, 

 it is to them a positive loss to be thus rejected and disowned. 

 The rank and position of-the negro preachers in the south, whether 

 Baptist or Methodist, some of them freemen, and of good abili 

 ties, is decidedly lowered by the severance of the northern churches, 

 which is therefore adverse to the gradual advancement of the 

 African race, which can alone fit them for manumission. 



Some of the planters in Glynn County have of late permitted 

 the distribution of Bibles among their slaves, and it was curious 

 to remark that they who were unable to read were as anxious to 

 possess them as those who could. Besides Christianizing the 

 blacks, the clergy of all sects are doing them incalculable service, 

 by preaching continually to both races that the matrimonial tie 

 should be held sacred, without respect to color. To the domi 

 nant race one of the most serious evils of slavery is its tendency 

 to blight domestic happiness ; and the anxiety of parents for their 

 sons, and a constant fear of their licentious intercourse with slaves, 

 is painfully great. We know but too much of this evil in free 

 countries, wherever there is a vast distance between the rich and 

 poor, giving a power to wealth which insures a frightful amount 

 of prostitution. Here it is accompanied with a publicity which 

 is keenly felt as a disgrace by the more refined of the white 

 women. The female slave is proud of her connection with a 

 white man, and thinks it an honor to have a mulatto child, hop 

 ing that it will be better provided for than a black child. Yet 

 the mixed offspring is not very numerous. The mulattoes alone 

 represent nearly all the illicit intercourse between the white man 

 and negro of the living generation. I am told that they do not 

 constitute more than two and a half per cent, of the whole popu 

 lation. If the statistics of the illegitimate children of the whites 

 born here could be compared with those in Great Britain, it might 

 lead to conclusions by no means favorable to the free country. 

 Here there is no possibility of concealment, the color of the child 

 stamps upon him the mark of bastardy, and transmits it to great- 

 grand-children born in lawful wedlock ; whereas if, in Europe, 

 there was some mark or indelible stain betraying all the delin- 



