To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites.
This passage illustrates the profound hope and expectation that enslaved African Americans placed on emancipation as a deliverance from all suffering.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.