The law, then, against race intermarriage has a tendency to encourage and promote race intermixture, rather than to discourage and prevent it; because under existing circumstances local sentiment in our part of the country tolerates the intermixture, provided that the white husband and father does not lead to the altar in honorable wedlock the woman he may have selected as the companion of his life, and the mother of his children.
If, instead of prohibiting race intermarriage, the law would compel marriage in all cases of concubinage, such a law would have a tendency to discourage race intermixture; because it is only when they marry according to the forms of law that the white husband and father is socially and otherwise ostracized.

Under the common law,--which is the established and recognized rule of action in all of our States in the absence of a local statute by which a different rule is established,--a valid marriage is nothing more than a civil contract entered into between two persons capable of making contracts.

But under our form of government marriage, like everything else, is what public opinion sees fit to make it.
"It is true that in our part of the country no union of the sexes is looked upon as a legal marriage unless the parties to the union are married according to the form prescribed by the local statutes.

While that is true it is also true that there are many unions, which, but for the local statutes, would be recognized and accepted as legal marriages and which, even under existing conditions, are tolerated by local sentiment and sanctioned by custom.

Such unions are known to exist, and yet are presumed not to exist.