Page:W. E. B. Du Bois - The Gift of Black Folk.pdf/151

Rh active determination. One cannot think then of democracy in America or in the modern world without reference to the American Negro. The democracy established in America in the eighteenth century was not, and was not designed to be, a democracy of the masses of men and it was thus singularly easy for people to fail to see the incongruity of democracy and slavery. It was the Negro himself who forced the consideration of this incongruity, who made emancipation inevitable and made the modern world at least consider if not wholly accept the idea of a democracy including men of all races and colors.

Naturally, at first, it was the passive presence of the Negro with his pitiable suffering and sporadic expression of unrest that bothered the American colonists. Massachusetts and Connecticut early in the seventeenth century tried to compromise with their consciences by declaring that there should be no slavery except of persons "willingly selling themselves" or "sold to us." And these were to have "All the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel." Massachusetts even took a strong stand against proven "man stealing"'; but it was left to a little band of Germans in Pennsylvania,