The following is what Mr. Ray Stannard Baker[64] has to say about the precise fact of intermarriages in the Northern States in general: "In the great majority of intermarriages the white women belong to the lower walks of life. They are German, Irish, or other foreign women, respectable but ignorant. As far as I can see from investigating a number of such cases, the home life is as happy as that of other people in the same stratum of life. But the white woman who marries a Negro is speedily declassed: she is ostracised by the white people, and while she finds a certain place among the Negroes, she is not even readily accepted as a Negro. In short, she is cut off from both races. When I was at Xenia, O., I was told of a case of a white man who was arrested for living with a Negro woman. The magistrate compelled him to marry the Negro woman as the worst punishment he could invent.
"For this reason, although there are no laws in most Northern States against mixed marriages, and although the Negro population has been increasing, the number of intermarriages is not only not increasing, but in many cities, as in Boston, it is decreasing. It is an unpopular institution."
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