But the whites cannot consent to intermarriage. That would greatly benefit the negroes. While some who have never had good opportunity of actual observation confidently contend that there are no backward or lower races, we southerners have noted all our lives that a very great majority of the negroes who climb above the level and prosper in occupation, have a large admixture of white blood. It would be an enormous rise for the mass if fusion were assured. But for us--why, we should disinherit our children of their share in the grand destiny of the Caucasian race if we made average negroes their fathers or mothers. Southern dread of amalgamation is not to be scouted as a mere bugbear. Think of the half-breeds that lined all the border between the States and the Indians; of how the whites have mixed with native races in Mexico, Central and South America; of white and negro intermingling in Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, in the United States, and especially in the south. Think of whites and negroes now legally married and marrying in the neighboring States of the Union. In 1902, eight white women were living with negro husbands in Xenia, Ohio;[148] and there were children of all these mixed marriages except one.[149] Consider also that prominent negroes advocate these marriages. Douglass had a white wife. He preached that the American negro must set before himself assimilation as his true goal. Professor DuBois is really a disciple of Douglass, as appears from some of his utterances. We give in a footnote what another prominent negro has recently said in public.[150] The moment that the negro became an influential factor in southern politics, a real agitation against the anti-intermarriage laws would begin. There would come a small number of negroes, controlling votes, of so much property and respectability that their children would be regarded as eligible matches by some of the poorer and more destitute whites. Marriages between such, solemnized on a visit to a State permitting, would occur. And our laws last mentioned would be more and more evaded and their repeal become gradually more probable. When they had won political equality with the patricians, the Roman plebeians repealed the prohibition of intermarriage which the former had stubbornly maintained. These two orders were of the same race. Therefore intermarriage could not be the boon to the plebeians that it would now be to the southern negro, lifting him up as it would do. If he has opportunity, he will struggle for it more resolutely than the plebeians did. A small number of negroes have already been assimilated in America, and a few more are still to be assimilated, as I shall explain later on. This sure deliverance from the destruction which now threatens is more and more sought after by the intelligent few. And if the vote of the negroes was allowed to count, it would not be long until, under the example and appeal of their leaders, all of them would be making for that haven of refuge.