Especially delicate and hazardous is any investigation of the most intimate race relation which in the nature of things is better understood in the South than in the North. The sexual relation between Whites and Negroes is in such contradiction to much of the indictment against the negro race, and is so abhorrent even to that section of the white race that practices it, that there is no easy or pleasant way of alluding to it. Actual race mixture is proven by the presence in the South of two million mulattoes; it is no new thing, for it has been going on steadily ever since the African appeared in the United States, though there are people who insist that there was little or no amalgamation until Northern soldiers came down during the war and remained in garrison during Reconstruction. Every intelligent traveler in the ante-bellum period, every candid observer, is a witness to the contrary. Since the earliest settlements there have continuously been, and still exist, two different forms of illicit relations between the races--concubinage and general irregularity. Whence came the hundreds of thousands of mulattoes in slavery days? Of course the child of a mulatto will be normally light, and of the two million mulattoes now in the country, very likely three fourths are the children of mulattoes. But what are the other five hundred thousand? To that fateful question a reply can be made only on the testimony of Southern Whites now living down there, and not likely to paint the picture blacker than it is. Here are some striking instances of negro concubinage; and the judgment of competent men is that hundreds of like incidents could be collected: CASE I.--A white business man in a small city of State A has lived twenty years with a mulatto woman. They have eight children, two of whom are successful business men, one of them a banker. The white man says that the woman has always been faithful to him, and though under the laws of the state he cannot marry her, he looks upon her as his wife and does what he can for the children. CASE II.--A judge of State B has recently sentenced two different white men for cohabitation, though many Whites remonstrated and told him that there was no use in singling out for punishment a few cases among so many. CASE III.--In State C a retiring judge suggests that cohabitation be made a hanging offense for the White, as the only way of stopping it. CASE IV.--In State D one of the leading citizens of a town is known by all his friends to be living with a black mistress.