No persons would have seen the Civil War with more surprise and horror than the Revolutionists of 1776; yet from the small and apparently dying institution of their day arose the walled and castled Slave-Power.
Du Bois reflects on the unexpected rise of the Slave Power, contrasting it with the views of the Revolutionists of 1776.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
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…
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…
Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.