The opposition to Negro education in the South was at first bitter, and showed itself in ashes, insult, and blood; for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro.
This quote describes the intense and violent resistance to Black education in the post-Civil War South, rooted in the belief that educated Black people posed a threat to the existing social order.
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Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.