Oglethorpe thought slavery against law and gospel; but the circumstances which gave Georgia its first inhabitants were not calculated to furnish citizens over-nice in their ideas about rum and slaves.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Oglethorpe thought slavery against law and gospel; but the circumstances which gave Georgia its first inhabitants were…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois discusses the early history of Georgia, contrasting its founder's anti-slavery stance with the pragmatic and morally compromised attitudes of its initial settlers regarding rum and enslaved people.
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A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.
One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.