But some one will say that we are fighting "bogies"; that no one in the North, much less in the South, desires any such amalgamation. Do not believe it! The intense, the supreme yearning of large bodies of Negroes is for social recognition among the Whites--more especially for intermarriage with their haughty, old-time despisers. Who does not know this, simply does not understand the dominant facts of Southern life.[15] True, there may be no longer anyone in the North that openly advocates miscegenation--no one that would welcome or even tolerate it in his family, though we remember to have read years ago a distinct declaration, by no mean authority, that it might be a positive advantage to pour the strong, rich blood of the Black man into the languid veins of the Southern Whites! However, granted that all would NOW[16] disavow such a sentiment--and let us accept the disavowal unreservedly--the fact remains that the highest authorities in the North, the factors that form public opinion and guide legislation, have never yet to our knowledge raised their voices against miscegenation in the South. What means this expressive silence? In this momentous, all-overshadowing controversy, there is no middle ground. He that is not against amalgamation is for it. Who so does not oppose must _ipso facto_ favour it. Only ciphers are neither plus nor minus. [15] Nor do we see how any one can blame them. Especially the intelligent Mulatto recognizes, and justly, that social equality, with its necessary corollary, intermarriage, is the key of the whole position. Without it, he sees clearly that his race is doomed. From his point of view, the denial of such equality appears as a colossal injustice, an immeasurable wrong. And unless he be racially inferior, he is incontrovertibly right. [16] We are not willing to deface these pages with passages quoted in proof of the fact that miscegenation has been advocated openly and repeatedly in the highest quarters, and doubtless in all good faith and good will. But he who has any doubt on this point may consult the _Edinburgh Review_ of 1827, pp. 390-394; Lyell's "Second Visit to the United States," 1849, Vol. II., p. 216; The Fourth of July Speech of Mr. Wendell Phillips (1863); the speeches of Mr. Theodore Tilton, sometime editor of _The Independent_; but especially the collection of pamphlets entitled "Miscegenation," by D. G. Croly and others (1864), wherein "not only the propriety, but the necessity, of the marriage of Black and White" is argued passionately. Abominable as such doctrines may sound, they flow inevitably from the principles even at this date commonly accepted in both Englands, and they can be proved _wrong_ only by proving that our present contentions are _right_.