Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[598] to the Indian, while they facilitate in every way the increase of the negro. I infer, therefore, from all these circumstances that the negro race must be considered as permanently settled upon this continent, no less firmly than the white race, and that it is our duty to look upon them as co-tenants in the possession of this part of the world.

Remember that I have thus far presented the case only with reference to the Southern States, where the climate is particularly favorable to the maintenance and multiplication of the negro race. Before drawing any inference, however, from my first assertion that the negro will easily and without foreign assistance maintain himself and multiply in the warmer parts of this continent, let us consider a few other features of this momentous question of race. Whites and blacks may multiply together, but their offspring is never either white or black; it is always mulatto. It is a half-breed, and shares all the peculiarities of half-breeds, among whose most important characteristics is their sterility, or at least their reduced fecundity. This shows the connection to be contrary to the normal state of the races, as it is contrary to the preservation of species in the animal kingdom. . . . Far