With this aim in mind, in view of the enormous amount of material,
we have found it necessary to confine ourselves within very definite
limits. A thorough study of all the questions relating to the Negro in
the United States would fill volumes, for sooner or later it would touch
upon all the great problems of American life. No attempt is made to
perform such a task; rather is it intended to fix attention upon the
race itself as definitely as possible. Even with this limitation there
are some topics that might be treated at length, but that have already
been studied so thoroughly that no very great modification is now likely
to be made of the results obtained. Such are many of the questions
revolving around the general subject of slavery. Wars are studied not so
much to take note of the achievement of Negro soldiers, vital as that
is, as to record the effect of these events on the life of the great
body of people. Both wars and slavery thus become not more than
incidents in the history of the ultimate problem.

In view of what has been said, it is natural that the method of
treatment should vary with the different chapters. Sometimes it is
general, as when we touch upon the highways of American history.
Sometimes it is intensive, as in the consideration of insurrections and
early effort for social progress; and Liberia, as a distinct and much
criticized experiment in government by American Negroes, receives very
special attention. For the first time also an effort is now made to
treat consecutively the life of the Negro people in America for the last
fifty years.

This work is the result of studies on which I have been engaged for
a number of years and which have already seen some light in _A Short
History of the American Negro_ and _The Negro in Literature and Art_;
and acquaintance with the elementary facts contained in such books as