Racial
legislation may, of course, be considered from the point of view of
the negro, the Indian, and the alien, and indeed it differs much in
all three. Other personal legislation is largely concerned with the
right to exercise trade, already discussed, and the questions of
marriage and divorce we reserve for the next chapter. In the past we
have been very unjust, not to say cruel, to the Indian, and though
naturally in some respects a high-natured race, have constantly denied
him any political share in the government, and only in the very last
few years grudgingly extended it to such Indians as renounce their
tribe and adopt the habits and mode of life of the white man, or, as
in early England, to such freeholders as acquire a quarter section of
land. In the negro's case, however, we atoned for the early crime of
enslavement by the sentimental hurry with which we endeavored in the
'60's and '70's of the last century to take him up by law and force
him into exact equality, social as well as political, with the white
man. To aliens, in the third hand, we have been consistently generous,
having shown only in the very last few years any attempt whatever to
exclude the most worthless or undesirable; except that the prejudice
against the Mongolian in the far West is quite as bitter as it ever
was against the negro in the South, and he is still sternly refused
citizenship, even national citizenship, which we freely extend to the
African. We are thus left in the ridiculous situation of providing
that nobody may be a citizen of our great Republic except a white
Caucasian and a black African, with considerable ambiguity still as
to what the word "white" means. The American Indians are, indeed,
admitted under the conditions before mentioned, so that as a
catch-word the reader may remember that we are a red, white, and black
country, but not a brown or yellow one. All this is, of course,
the accident of history; but the accidents of history are its most
important incidents.

Taking Asiatic races first, the far Western States vie with each other
in passing legislation which shall deny them the right to life, or at
least to live upon any equality of competition with the white. Most of
such laws are, of course, unconstitutional, but they were at one time
enacted with more rapidity than the Supreme Court of the United States
could declare them so. Congress tries to be more reasonable and,
indeed, has to be so, in view of the fact th