"They said: Slavery was wrong but not all wrong: slavery must perish and not simply move; God made black men, God made slavery, the will of God be done, slavery to the glory of God and black men as his servants and ours, slavery as a way to freedom-the freedom of blacks, the freedom of whites; white freedom as the goal of the world and black slavery as the path thereto. Up with the white world, down with the black!
Then came this battle called Civil War, beginning in Kansas in 1854, and ending in the presidential election of 1876-twenty awful years. The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. The whole weight of America was thrown to color caste. The colored world went down before England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy and America. A new slavery arose. The upward moving of white labor was betrayed into wars for profit based on color caste. Democracy died save in the hearts of black folk."

From Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. Du Bois