Moreover, it was due to no wisdom and foresight on the part of the fathers that fortuitous circumstances made the result of that war what it was, nor was it due to exceptional philanthropy on the part of their descendants that that result included the abolition of slavery.
Du Bois argues that the outcomes of historical events, such as the Civil War, were not solely due to the foresight of leaders but rather contingent circumstances.
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Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.