CHAPTER I.

SKETCH OF SOCIAL HISTORY.

The Importation of the Africans--Character of the Colored
Population in 1860--Colored Population in British West
Indian Possessions--Free Colored People of the South--Free
Colored People of the North--Notes.


Professor DuBois, in his exhaustive work upon the "Suppression of the
African Slave-Trade," has brought within comparatively narrow limits
the great mass of facts bearing upon his subject, and in synopses and
indices has presented all of the more important literature it has
induced. In his Monograph, published as Volume II of the Harvard
Historical Series, he has traced the rise of this nefarious traffic,
especially with reference to the American colonies, exhibited the
proportions to which it expanded, and the tenacity with which it held
on to its purpose until it met its death in the fate of the
ill-starred Southern Confederacy. Every step in his narrative is
supported by references to unimpeachable authorities; and the
scholarly Monograph bears high testimony to the author's earnest
labor, painstaking research and unswerving fidelity. Should the
present work stimulate inquiry beyond the scope herein set before the
reader, he is most confidently referred to Professor Du Bois' book as
containing a complete exposition of the development and overthrow of
that awful crime.