du bois: “thus slavery was the economic lag of the 16th century carried over into the 19th century & bringing by contrast & by friction moral lapses and political difficulties. it has been estimated that the southern states had in 1860 three billion dollars invested in slaves…”
“which meant that slaves and land represented the mass of their capital. being generally convinced that negroes could only labor as slaves, it was easy for them to become further persuaded that slaves were better off than white workers[…]”
“and that the south had a better labor system than the north, with extraordinary possibilities in industrial and social development.”
“the south had but one argument against following modern civilization in this yielding to the demand of laboring humanity: it insisted on the efficiency of negro labor for ordinary toil&on its essential equality in physical condition with the average labor of europe and america.”
“but in order to maintain its income without sacrifice or exertion, the south fell back on a doctrine of racial differences which it asserted made higher intelligence and increased efficiency impossible for negro labor.”
“wishing such an excuse for lazy indulgence, the planter easily found, invented and proved it. his subservient religious leaders reverted to the “curse of canaan”; his pseudo-scientists gathered and supplemented all available doctrines of race inferiority[…]”
“his scattered schools and pedantic periodicals repeated these legends, until for the average planter born after 1840 it was impossible not to believe that all valid laws in psychology, economics and politics stopped with the negro race.”
—w. e. b. du bois, black reconstruction
—w. e. b. du bois, black reconstruction
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