The “free” or abnormal negro of the Southern States tends to extinction—of the Middle States still more rapidly—and finally, most rapidly of all in New England. Or the actual laws governing this matter may be summed up thus:—In precise proportion as the negro is thrust from his normal condition into that of the white man, he tends to extinction, or one might say, that precisely as the rights of the white man are forced on the negro, he is destroyed. All the negroes brought to this continent were in a normal condition. The monstrous assumption set up by British writers when the colonists began to throw off the British dominion, that negroes were _black_-white men, and, naturally considered, entitled to the same _status_, after nearly a hundred years, and an amount of wrong, falsehood, and suffering to these people that is beyond computation, has at last culminated. From this time forth, few, if any, will be “emancipated.” Indeed, it is far more likely that the numbers restored to a normal condition will outnumber those thrust from their natural relations to white men. If all the legislation on the subject were suddenly blotted out, of course there would be no such thing as a “free negro” on this continent, and this is the point towards which the course of American society is now rapidly tending. It may be somewhat difficult to determine that period—for we know not what may be the action of many of the States that have a considerable population of this kind—but one can not err when saying that it can not be remote, and it is absolutely certain to arrive within the next hundred years. Indeed, it is most probable that from the culmination of the great “anti-slavery” imposture, or from the starting-point of the reaction, to the final period when such a social monstrosity as a “free” negro will be entirely extinct in the New World, the interval will be less than that of the strange and wide-spread delusion which has so long run riot over the understanding, the common sense, the interests, and self-respect of our people.