Instinct, hey?
I'd like to know, then, where all the mulattoes, and the quadroons, and the octoroons come from,--the yellow-skins and brown-skins and skins so nigh white you can't tell 'em with your spectacles on! The darkies must have bleached out amazingly here in America, for you'd have to hunt with a long pole and a telescope to boot to find a straight-out black one anywhere round,--leastwise that's my observation." "That was slavery." "Yes 'twas,--and then the damned rascals talk about the amalgamationists, and all that, up North.

'Twan't the abolitionists; 'twas the slaveholders and their friends that made a race of half-breeds all over the country; but, slavery or no slavery, they showed nature hadn't put any barriers between them,--and it seems to me an enough sight decenter and more respectable plan to marry fair and square than to sell your own children and the mother that bore them.

Come, now, ain't it ?" "Well, yes, if you come to that, I suppose it is!" "You _suppose_ it is! See here,--I've found out something since I've been down here, and have had time to think; 'tain't the living together that troubles squeamish stomachs; it's the marrying.

That's what's the matter!" "Just about!" assented the Captain, with an amused look, "and here's a case in point.

Surrey ought to have been shot for marrying one of that degraded race." "Bah! he married one of his own race, if I know how to calculate." "There, Jim, don't be a fool! If she's got any negro blood in her veins she's a nigger, and all your talk won't make her anything else." "I say, Captain, I've heard that some of your ancestors were Indians: is that so ?" "Yes: my great-grandmother was an Indian chief's daughter,--so they say; and you might as well claim royalty when you have the chance." "Bless me! your great-grandmother, eh?
Come, now, what do you call yourself,--an Injun ?" "No, I don't.