“Yes ’twas,—­and then the damned rascals talk about the amalgamationists, and all that, up North.  ’Twan’t the abolitionists; ’twas the slaveholders and their friends that made a race of half-breeds all over the country; but, slavery or no slavery, they showed nature hadn’t put any barriers between them,—­and it seems to me an enough sight decenter and more respectable plan to marry fair and square than to sell your own children and the mother that bore them.  Come, now, ain’t it?”

“Well, yes, if you come to that, I suppose it is!”

“You suppose it is!  See here,—­I’ve found out something since I’ve been down here, and have had time to think; ’tain’t the living together that troubles squeamish stomachs; it’s the marrying.  That’s what’s the matter!”

“Just about!” assented the Captain, with an amused look, “and here’s a case in point.  Surrey ought to have been shot for marrying one of that degraded race.”

“Bah! he married one of his own race, if I know how to calculate.”

“There, Jim, don’t be a fool!  If she’s got any negro blood in her veins she’s a nigger, and all your talk won’t make her anything else.”

“I say, Captain, I’ve heard that some of your ancestors were Indians:  is that so?”

“Yes:  my great-grandmother was an Indian chief’s daughter,—­so they say; and you might as well claim royalty when you have the chance.”

“Bless me! your great-grandmother, eh?  Come, now, what do you call yourself,—­an Injun?”

“No, I don’t.  I call myself an Anglo-Saxon.”

“What, not call yourself an Injun,—­when your great-grandmother was one?  Here’s a pretty go!”

“Nonsense! ’tisn’t likely that filtered Indian blood can take precedence and mastery of all the Anglo-Saxon material it’s run through since then.”

“Hurray! now you’ve said it.  Lookee here, Captain.  You say the Anglo-Saxon’s the master race of the world.”

“Of course I do.”

“Of course you do,—­being a sensible fellow.  So do I; and you say the negro blood is mighty poor stuff, and the race a long way behind ours.”

“Of course, again.”

“Now, Captain, just take a sober squint at your own logic.  You back Anglo-Saxon against the field; very well! here’s Miss Ercildoune, we’ll say, one eighth negro, seven eighths Anglo-Saxon.  You make that one eighth stronger than all the other seven eighths:  you make that little bit of negro master of all the lot of Anglo-Saxon.  Now I have such a good opinion of my own race that if it were t’other way about, I’d think the one eighth Saxon strong enough to beat the seven eighths nigger.  That’s sound, isn’t it? consequently, I call anybody that’s got any mixture at all, and that knows anything, and keeps a clean face,—­and ain’t a rebel, nor yet a Copperhead,—­I call him, if it’s a him, and her, if it’s a she, one of us.  And I mean to say to any such from henceforth, ’Here’s your chance,—­go in, and win, if you can,—­and anybody be damn’d that stops you!’”