laws many persons currently known as “colored,” or, more recently as “Negro,” would be legally white if they chose to claim and exercise the privilege.  In Ohio, before the Civil War, a person more than half-white was legally entitled to all the rights of a white man.  In South Carolina, the line of cleavage was left somewhat indefinite; the color line was drawn tentatively at one-fourth of Negro blood, but this was not held conclusive.

“The term ’mulatto’,” said the Supreme Court of that State in a reported case, “is not invariably applicable to every admixture of African blood with the European, nor is one having all the features of a white to be ranked with the degraded class designated by the laws of the State as persons of color, because of some remote taint of the Negro race....  The question whether persons are colored or white, where color or feature is doubtful, is for the jury to determine by reputation, by reception into society, and by their exercises of the privileges of a white man, as well as by admixture of blood.”

It is well known that this liberality of view grew out of widespread conditions in the State, which these decisions in their turn tended to emphasize.  They were probably due to the large preponderance of colored people in the State, which rendered the whites the more willing to augment their own number.  There are many interesting color-line decisions in the reports of the Southern courts, which space will not permit the mention of.

In another article I shall consider certain conditions which retard the development of the future American race type which I have suggested, as well as certain other tendencies which are likely to promote it.

Boston Evening Transcript, August 25, 1900

A COMPLETE RACE-AMALGAMATION LIKELY TO OCCUR

I have endeavored in two former letters to set out the reasons why it seems likely that the future American ethnic type will be formed by a fusion of all the various races now peopling this continent, and to show that this process has been under way, slowly but surely, like all evolutionary movements, for several hundred years.  I wish now to consider some of the conditions which will retard this fusion, as well as certain other facts which tend to promote it.

The Indian phase of the problem, so far at least as the United States is concerned, has been practically disposed of in what has already been said.  The absorption of the Indians will be delayed so long as the tribal relations continue, and so long as the Indians are treated as wards of the Government, instead of being given their rights once for all, and placed upon the footing of other citizens.  It is presumed that this will come about as the wilder Indians are educated and by the development of the country brought into closer contact with civilization, which must happen before a very great while.  As has been