The changes in price during the next few years drove out of competition many survivors of the small-farming free-labor system, and put the slave régime in position to dictate the policy of the nation.
This quote illustrates how economic pressures shifted the balance of power in the U.S. towards the slave system.
Share
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.
In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.
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.