s who refused to intermingle
with the blacks found it convenient to approach the hybrids who showed
less color. In the course of time, therefore, the assimilation of the
blacks was as pronounced in some of the Spanish colonies as in those
which originally exhibited less race antipathy. There are millions of
Hispanicized Negroes in Latin America. Many of the mixed breeds,
however, have Indian rather than Negro blood.[449]

Miscegenation had its best chance among the French. Not being
disinclined to mingle with Negroes, the French early faced the problem
of the half caste, which was given consideration in the most human of
all slave regulations, the _Code Noir_.[450] It provided that free men
who had children from their concubinage with women-slaves (if they
consented to such concubinage) should be punished by a fine of two
thousand pounds of sugar. But if the offender was the master himself,
in addition to the fine, the slave should be taken from him, sold for
the benefit of the hospital and never be allowed to be freed;
excepting, that, if the man was not married to another person at the
time of his concubinage, he was to marry the woman slave, who,
together with her children, should thereby become free. Masters were
forbidden to constrain slaves to marry against their will. Many
Frenchmen like those in Haiti married their Negro mistresses,
producing attractive half caste women who because of their wealth were
sought by gentlemen in preference to their own women without dot.

Among the English the situation was decidedly different. There was not
so much need for the use of Negro women by Englishmen in the New
World, but there was the same tendency to cohabit with them. In the
end, however, the English, unlike the Latins, disowned their offspring
by slave women, leaving these children to follow the condition of
their mother. There was, therefore, not so much less miscegenation
among the English but there remained the natural tendency so to
denounce these unions as eventually to restrict the custom, as it is
today, to the weaker types of both races, the offspring of whom in the
case of slave mothers became a commodity in the commercial world.

There was extensive miscegenation in the English colonies, however,
before the race as a majority could realize the apparent need for
maintaining its integrity. With the development of the industries came
the use of the white servants as well as the slaves. The status of the
one