But to me neither soldier nor fugitive speaks with so deep a meaning as that dark human cloud that clung like remorse on the rear of those swift columns, swelling at times to half their size, almost engulfing and choking them.
Du Bois emphasizes the profound historical significance of the masses of formerly enslaved people who followed Sherman's army during the Civil War.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…
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.