“You never made a sadder mistake. The South did not fight to hold slaves. Our Confederate government at Richmond offered to guarantee to Europe, the freedom of every slave for the recognition of our independence. Slavery was bound of its own weight to fall. Virginia came within one vote in her assembly of freeing her slaves years before the war. But for the frenzy of your Abolition fanatics who first sought to destroy the Union by Secession, and then forced Secession on the South, we would have freed the slaves before this without a war, from the very necessities of the progress of the material world, to say nothing of its moral progress. We fought for the rights we held under the old constitution, made by a slave-holding aristocracy. But we collided with the resistless movement of humanity from the idea of local sovereignty toward nationalism, centralisation, solidarity.” “That’s why I say,” interrupted the deacon, “your Negro question has already been settled. The nation has become a reality not a name.” “And that is why I know, deacon,” insisted the Preacher, “that we have not only not settled this question,--we haven’t even faced the issues. Nationality demands solidarity. And you can never get solidarity in a nation of equal rights out of two hostile races that do not intermarry. _In a Democracy you can not build a nation inside of a nation of two antagonistic races, and therefore the future American must be either an Anglo Saxon or a Mulatto_. And if a Mulatto, will the future be worth discussing?” “I never thought of it in just that way,” answered the deacon. “It is my work to maintain the racial absolutism of the Anglo-Saxon in the South, politically, socially, economically.” “But can it be done? I see many evidences of a mixture of blood already,” said the deacon seriously. “Yes, we are doing it. This mixture you observe has no social significance, for a simple reason. It is all the result of the surviving polygamous and lawless instincts of the white male. Unless by the gradual encroachments of time, culture, wealth and political exigencies, the time comes that a negro shall be allowed freely to choose a white woman for his wife, the racial integrity remains intact. The right to choose one’s mate is the foundation of racial life and of civilisation. The South must guard with flaming sword every avenue of approach to this holy of holies. And there are many subtle forces at work to obscure these possible approaches.” “Well, no matter,” broke in the deacon, “come with us, and you will have more power to touch with your ideas the wealth and virtue of the whole nation.” The Preacher was silent a moment and seemed to be musing in a sort of half dream. The deacon looked at him with a growing sense of the hopelessness of his task, but of surprise at this revelation of the secrets of his inner life.