"What harm would there've been in that, providing they're as white as anybody, and got plenty of money, and were handsome? There must be a singular sensibility, that I don't understand, exerting itself in your society," said the Captain laconically.
"Harm! You'd find out the harm. Just live in South Carolina a year or two. 'Tisn't the fair complexion-we don't dispute that-but it's the blood."
"Oh! then the legal objection," said the Captain, "is what is so revolting to society, eh! It may be sown broadcast in licentiousness, then, and custom sustains an immoral element that is devouring the essential bond of society."
"Excuse me, Captain," interrupted the Colonel. "George, you are always taking me upon suppositions. I only related it to the Captain in order to show the power and integrity of our law, and how South Carolinians frequently sacrifice their own interests to maintain it intact. Nothing could be more fatal to its vitality than to make provisions which would entail legal preferences. The law in regard to free niggers leaving the State should be looked upon in the light of protection rather than alienation, for it is made to protect property and society. Yet where a case is attended with such circumstances as that of Jones's, some disposition to accommodate might have been evinced without endangering the State's sovereignty. And I must also differ with you, George, so far as the girls maintained their self-respect. It was commendable in them to get husbands whom they could live with in the bonds of matrimony. My word for it, George, though I am a Southerner, and may give rein to improprieties at times, nothing can be more pernicious to our society than this destructive system of our first people in keeping mistresses. It's a source of misery at best, depending upon expediency instead of obligation, and results in bringing forth children and heirs with an entailed burden upon their lives, to be disowned, cast off from paternal rights, and left to the tender mercies of the law. We see the curse, yet countenance it-and while it devours domestic affections and has cankered the core of social obligations, we look upon it as a flowery garden as we pass by the wayside.. There may be but a shadow between the rightful heir and the doubtful son-the former may enjoy the bounty of his inheritance, but the latter is doomed to know not his sire nor his kinsman, but to suffer the doubts and fears and the dark gloom which broods over a bondman's life."