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

2d. Will not the practical amalgamation fostered by slavery become more general after its abolition?

Being the result of the vices engendered by slavery, it is to be hoped that the emancipation of the blacks, by securing to them a legal recognition of their natural ties, will tend to diminish this unnatural amalgamation and lessen everywhere the number of these unfortunate half-breeds. My reason for believing that the colored population of the North will gradually vanish is founded in great degree upon the fact that that population does not increase where it exists now, but is constantly recruited by an influx from the South. The southern half-breeds feel their false position at the South more keenly than the blacks, and are more inclined to escape to the North than the individuals of purer black blood. Remove the oppression under which the colored population now suffers, and the current will at once be reversed; blacks and mulattoes of the North will seek the sunny South. But I see no cause which should check the increase of the black population in the Southern