Had I been informed that some formidable foreign Power had invaded our country, I would not, I ought not, be more alarmed than on hearing that South Carolina had repealed her law prohibiting the importation of slaves....
Du Bois compares the alarm caused by South Carolina's repeal of the slave importation law to the fear of foreign invasion, emphasizing its significance.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy.
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.
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.