Why suffer the establishment of this lying axiom which checks all progress?  Why not cast our eyes on the neighboring colonies where the prejudice of color reigned supremely before emancipation, and where it has since become rapidly effaced.  The United States have a lofty end to attain; let them beware how they take too low an aim!  They will not have more than they need, with the efforts of all, the charity of all, the sacrifices of all, the earnest endeavors by which all can elevate themselves above vulgar prejudices, to accomplish a task at once the most difficult and most glorious that has ever been proposed to a great people.

The North, I repeat, is bound to give a noble example by obtaining a shining victory over itself.  Let it say to itself that coexistence is not amalgamation; the question is not to marry negroes, but to treat them with justice.  The fear of amalgamation once vanished, many things will change in appearance.  Why, in fact, is the prejudice of race stronger in the free States than in the slave States?  Because the latter know that slavery is a sufficient line of demarcation, and because they have not to dread amalgamation.  Now, this is and will be nowhere to be dreaded; the instinct of both races will prevent such mingling, and the blacks are as anxious to remain separate from the whites as the whites are to avoid alliance with the blacks.  As I have said, nothing but slavery, and the perverse habits that it engenders, could have succeeded in some sort in breaking down this barrier.  If the class of mullattoes thus formed rule in some republics of South America, it proceeds from the absence of a numerous and powerful white race, like that which is covering the United States with its continually increasing population.

Decidedly, fears of amalgamation are puerile in such a country; and decidedly also, any other solution than the coexistence of races would be wrong.  Doubtless, a natural concentration of the emancipated negroes will be some day effected; they will flock to those States where their relative number will ensure to them the most influence.  Perhaps we may even obtain a glimpse of the time when, by the result of a providential compensation, the countries which have been the witnesses of their sufferings, and which they have watered with their tears, these countries where they, better than any others, can devote themselves to labor, will belong to them in great part.  Are the Antilles and the regions of the Gulf of Mexico destined to become the refuge and almost the empire of Africans torn from their own continent?  It is possible, but not certain.  In any case, this geographical repartition of the races would be wrought peaceably; the effort to effect it by violent measures would justly arouse the conscience of the human race.  So long as we talk of transporting the blacks to Africa, to St. Domingo, or elsewhere, so long as the peaceable coexistence of the races be not accepted, the barbarous proceedings which dishonor America will not cease, the Northern States will maltreat their free negroes, and the South will cling to slavery as to the only means of preventing a struggle for extermination.