W.E.B. Du Bois: “The legacy of the Freedmen’s Bureau is the heavy heritage of this generation.”

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.

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.

Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.

If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.