If two races live together on the same land and under the same government as master and slave, or as superior and inferior, there will grow up in time two moral standards in consequence of the two races living together under such conditions. The master or superior race will have one standard to regulate the conduct of individuals belonging to it in respect to one another, and another standard to regulate the conduct of those self-same individuals in respect to individuals of the slave or inferior race. Action which would be considered bad if done by an individual of the former race to another individual of the same race, would not be regarded as bad at all, or at least in anything like the same degree, if done to an individual of the latter race. On the other hand, if the same offense were committed by an individual of the slave or inferior race against an individual of the master or superior race, it would not only be deemed bad, but treated as very bad.
With the evolution of the double moral standard and its application to the conduct of these two sets of individuals in the state, there grows up in the life of both classes no little confusion in respect to moral ideas, no little confusion in respect to ideas of right and wrong. Nor is this surprising. The results of such a double standard of morals could not possibly be different so long as human nature is what it is. The natural man takes instinctively to the double standard, to any scheme of morals which makes it easy for him to sin, and difficult for a brother or enemy to do likewise. And this is exactly what our American double standard does practically in the South for both races, but especially for the dominant race, for example, in regard to all that group of actions, which grows out of the relation of the sexes in Southern society.
What relations do the Southern males of the white race sustain to the females of both races? Are these relations confined strictly to the females of their own race? Or do they extend to the females of the black race? Speaking frankly, we all know what the instinct of the male animal is, and man after all, is physically a male animal. He is by nature one of the most polygamous of male animals. There goes on in some form among the human males, as among other males, a constant struggle for the females. In polygamous countries each man obtains as many wives as he can purchase and support. In monogamous countries he is limited by law to one wife, whether he is able to maintain a plurality of wives or not. When he marries this one woman the law defines his relations to her and also to the children who may issue from such a union. But the man--I am talking broadly--is at heart a polygamist still. The mere animal instinct in his blood inclines him to run after, to obtain possession of other wives. To give way to this inclination in monogamous countries he knows to be attended with danger, to be fraught with sundry grievous consequences to himself. He is liable to his wife, for example, to an action for divorce on the ground of adultery. He is liable to be prosecuted criminally on the same charge by the state, and to be sent to prison for a term of years. But this is not the end of his troubles. Public opinion, society, falls foul of him also in consequence of his misconduct. He loses social recognition, the respect of his fellows, becomes in common parlance a disgraced man. The one-wife country is grounded on the inviolability of the Seventh Commandment. All the sanctions of law, of morals, and of religion conspire to protect the wife against the roving propensities of the husband, combine to curb his male instinct to run after many women, to practice plural marriages. There thus grows up in the breast of the race, is transmitted to each man with the accumulated strength of social heredity, a feeling of personal fear, a sense of moral obligation, which together war against his male instinct for promiscuous sexual intercourse, and make for male purity, for male fidelity to the one-wife idea, to the one-wife institution. The birth of this wholesome fear in society is the beginning of wisdom in monogamous countries. And unless this sense of moral obligation is able to maintain its ascendancy in those countries, the male sexual instinct to practice plural marriages will reassert itself, will revert, if not openly, then secretly, to a state of nature, to illicit relations. But every tendency to such reassertion, or reversion, is effectively checked in a land where national morals are sound, are pure, by wise laws which a strong, an uncompromising public sentiment makes and executes impartially against all offenders.