Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 60

4. M. F. Stephenson, Negro Equality: Or the Effects of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, on the Morals of the People. Proofs of the Falsity of the Doctrine Are from the Bible, from Physiology, Anatomy, Chemistry, and Their Cognate Sciences (Augusta, GA: F. M. Singer & Co., 1870). (40 p.)

Pseudo-scientific defense of white supremacy “proving,” among other things, that “the Negro is the lowest species of the genus homo; and that amalgamation with any inferior species, will certainly again bring down the curse of God on our race” (emphasis in original). (The author believes that God sent the Flood because Cain married “a Mongol, or ‘cat-eyed’ Chinese.”) The author’s description of the Fifteenth Amendment suggests an origin for a term found in Mr. Stone’s analysis of race relations in his essay, “Race Friction.” “We have shown . . . [t]hat its [the Fifteenth Amendment] enactment was by fraud, and intended solely for the punishment and humiliation of the Southern people; but must inevitably coil its slimy folds around all the State of the Union. It REAVOLTING and DAMNING effects must soon become apparent to the most careless observer. The people of the South, like the Celtic and Scandinavian nations of Europe, have a natural antipathy to amalgamation with the Negro; and, consequently, his rapid and certain extinction, and that of the poor Indian, will relieve us measurably from its blighted effects in that quarter.” (The collection has another copy of this pamphlet in volume 38 [no. 12].)