Archibald Henry Grimké: “The first act of the South after the war was most unfriendly to the blacks.”

It is true examples of disinterested benevolence and individual sacrifices are numerous, particularly in the Southern States; but no systematic, vigorous, and successful measures have been made to overthrow this fabric of oppression.

This sounds singular in this land of the free and it is singular, for of no other class of American labor could it be said that its right to migrate from one state to another is actually obstructed by law and would be resisted by force.

It is a gangrene preying upon our vitals--an earthquake rumbling under our feet--a mine accumulating material for a national catastrophe.

It would reappear as Negro serfdom unless placed in the way of utter extinction.