W.E.B. Du Bois: “But especially it leads us to regard this institution as peculiarly the expression of the inner ethical life of a people…”

Yet even then the hard ruthless rape of the land began to tell.

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of…

So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.