nct, what many a would-be philosopher has failed
to see, that the application and carrying out of those principles
necessarily involve the fusion of the entire mass to which they are
applied, into one homogeneous whole; that we cannot have a government
founded on political equality, consistently with our having an inferior
and proscribed class of citizens; a class from whose daughters our sons
may not take their wives, and to whose sons we are not willing, either
in this or in any future generation, to give our daughters in marriage.
Political equality implies that the son of any parents may be raised to
the highest offices in the government, and wear the most brilliant
honors which a free people can confer. And the masses of the people
instinctively see, or rather feel, that it is impossible to admit to
such equality a class to whom we deny, and always intend to deny all
equality in the social state; and with whom we are shocked at the very
thought of ever uniting our race and our blood.

I am not now saying where the moral right of this matter lies; or
whether, in this inveterate hostility to a social equality with the
negro, the masses of the people are right or wrong. I am only affirming,
what certainly cannot be successfully denied, that while they retain and
cherish it, they will never be willing to apply to him this doctrine of
political equality. They will always resist it, as carrying with it, by
inevitable consequence, that social equality to which they are
determined never to submit. If the doctrine of political equality, so
fundamental, to our system of government, is ever to be extended so as
to embrace the colored man, it can only be done by overcoming and
utterly obliterating this social aversion.

If it were proved to be ever so desirable to effect such a change in the
tastes and prejudices of the American people, history does not lend any
countenance to the belief that it is possible. Wherever one people has
conquered another, the conquerors and their descendants have always
asserted for themselves a political superiority for ages; and that
political superiority has extended itself into all the relations of
social life. This has taken place with such uniformity, as to impress
upon the mind the belief that it occurs in obedience to some great law
of human nature, which may be expected to baffle all attempts at
resistance in the future, as it has done in the past. The testimony of
history is, that equali