We ought to go farther than has yet been proposed, and repeal the bills in question altogether, for why should we see Great Britain getting all the slave trade to themselves; why may not our country be enriched by that lucrative traffic?
Du Bois critiques the economic motivations behind the slave trade and advocates for a complete repeal of related bills.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.