Page:W. E. B. Du Bois - The Gift of Black Folk.pdf/237

Rh sequestered. But manifestly with all the losses of war and with the loss of the slaves it was unfair to take the land of the South without some compensation. The North was unwilling to add to its tremendous debt anything further to insure the economic independence of the Freedmen. The Freedmen therefore themselves with their political power and with such economic advantage as the war gave them, tried to get hold of land.

The Negro party platform of 1876, in one state, advocated “division of lands of the state as far as practical into small farms in order that the masses of our people may be enabled to become landholders.” In the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina, a colored man said: “One of the greatest of slavery bulwarks was the infernal plantation system, one man owning his thousand, another his twenty, another fifty thousands acres of land. This is the only way by which we will break up that system, and I maintain that our freedom will be of no effect if we allow it to continue. What is the main cause of the prosperity of the North. It is because every man has his own farm and is free and independent. Let the lands of the South be similarly divided. I would not say for one moment they should be confiscated but if sold to maintain the war, now that slavery is destroyed, let the plantation system