The masses of the Northern people were, however, led to favor slavery
by other arguments. One of them was that the slaves, if manumitted,
would at once rush to the North and overrun the free States. I have
heard that proposition warmly supported by fairly intelligent persons.
Another argument that weighed with a surprisingly large number of
people, was that civil equality would be followed by social equality.
As soon as they were free, negro men, it was said, would marry white
wives. "Do you want your son or your daughter to marry a nigger?" was
regarded as a knockout anti-Abolitionist argument. The idea, of
course, was absurd. "Is it to be inferred that because I don't want a
negro woman for a slave, I do want her for a wife?" was one of the
quaint and pithy observations attributed to Mr. Lincoln. I heard
Prof. Hudson, of Oberlin College, express the same idea in about the
same words many years before.
And yet there were plenty of Northern people to whom
"Amalgamation"--the word used to describe the apprehended union of the
races--was a veritable scarecrow. A young gentleman in a neighborhood
near where I lived when a boy was in all respects eligible for
matrimony.
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