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Power had invaded our country, I would not, I ought not, be more alarmed than on hearing that South Carolina had repealed her law prohibiting the importation of slaves....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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The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.
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…
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
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.