can determine who may marry in a State, there is no limit to its power....” The Supreme Court of Alabama[210] in 1872 declared that the laws against intermarriage did contravene the Civil Rights Bill and the Fourteenth Amendment. But this case was expressly overruled by Green v. State,[211] in which the court, answering both of the objections, said, “Marriage is not a mere contract, but a social and domestic institution upon which are founded all society and order, to be regulated and controlled by the sovereign power for the good of the State; and the several States of the Union in the adoption of the recent Amendments to the Constitution of the United States designed to secure to citizens rights of a civil or political nature only, and did not part with their hitherto unquestioned power of regulating, within their own borders, matters of purely social and domestic concern.” There are Federal cases to support the position of the State Courts. But it is of no use to pile up citations of decisions further to establish the well-accepted doctrine that marriage is more than a civil contract, that it is a domestic institution, and that a State, by virtue of its police power, has absolute control as to who may contract marriages or live in that relation within its borders.[212] Twenty-six States and Territories prohibit intermarriage between the white and other races. They recognize as valid such marriages when contracted in a State which allows them, unless the parties are trying to evade the laws of the State of their domicile or of their intended matrimonial residence. The States prescribe a heavier penalty for illicit intercourse between white persons and persons of another race than for the same offence between two persons of the same race; they inflict heavy punishments upon ministers and other officials who perform a marriage ceremony between a white person and one of another race, and upon those who issue licenses for such a marriage; and they declare the offspring of such marriages illegitimate and incapable of inheritance. In each of these positions, the courts, Federal as well as State, have upheld the twenty-six States and Territories. Twenty-four States and Territories do not prohibit intermarriage between the white and other races. It is not within the province of this study to consider the actual amount of admixture that is going on in these States. But inasmuch as Boston has often been cited as the city in which the number of marriages between white persons and Negroes is very large (estimated by Senator Money, of Mississippi, at 2,000 in 1902), the report of the registry department of Boston for the years 1900–1907 is here added: INTERMARRIAGES IN BOSTON