W.E.B. Du Bois: “Resolved, That the slaves in the brig Creole are amenable only to the laws of the United States.”

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.

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.

Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.

A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.