Among the commercial abuses still committed under the American flag, ... it appears that American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity, and in defiance of those of their own country.
This quote criticizes American citizens' involvement in the slave trade, emphasizing the moral and legal violations associated with it.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.
The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.