W.E.B. Du Bois: “The wants of common men were forgotten before the groan of giants.”

The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.