Page:W. E. B. Du Bois - The Gift of Black Folk.pdf/224

212 keep a Freedmen’s Bureau for a generation or use the Negro vote to reconstruct the Southern states and to insure such legislation as would at least begin the economic emancipation of the slave.

''In other words the North being unable to free the slave, let him try to free himself. And he did, and this was his greatest gift to this nation.''

Let us return to the steps by which the Negro accomplished this task.

In 1866, the joint committee of Congress on Reconstruction said that in the South: “A large proportion of the population had become, instead of mere chattels, free men and citizens. Through all the past struggle these had remained true and loyal and had, in large numbers, fought on the side of the Union. It was impossible to abandon them without securing them their rights as free men and citizens. The whole civilized world would have cried out against such base ingratitude and the bare idea is offensive to all right thinking men. Hence it became important to inquire what could be done to secure their rights, civil and political.”

The report then proceeded to emphasize the increased political power of the South and recommended the Fourteenth Amendment, since: “It appeared to your committee that the rights of these persons by whom the basis of representation