No man-made law can stop the union of the races. If intermarriage
be wrong, its prevention is best left to public opinion and to nature,
which wreaks its own fearful punishments on those who transgress its
laws and sin against it. We oppose the proposed statute in the language
of William Lloyd Garrison in 1843, in his successful campaign for the
repeal of a similar law in Massachusetts: 'Because it is not the
province, and does not belong to the power of any legislative assembly,
in a republican government, to decide on the complexional affinity of
those who choose to be united together in wedlock; and it may as
rationally decree that corpulent and lean, tall and short, strong and
weak persons shall not be married to each other as that there must be an
agreement in the complexion of the parties.'
"We oppose it for the physical reason that to prohibit such
intermarriage would be publicly to acknowledge that black blood is a
physical taint, something no self-respecting colored man and woman can
be asked to admit. We oppose it for the moral reason that all such laws
leave the colored girl absolutely helpless before the lust of the white
man, without the power to compel the seducer to marry. The statistics of
intermarriage in those states where it is permitted show this happens
so infrequently as to make the whole matter of legislation unnecessary.
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