of policy.
The war itself revealed clearly the fallacy of the position of the
patriots, who fought for their rights as Englishmen but not for the
fundamental rights of man; and their attitude received formal expression
in the compromises that entered into the Constitution. The expansion of
the Southwest depended on the labor of the Negro, whose history became
inextricably bound up with that of the cotton-gin; and the question or
the excuse of fugitives was the real key to the Seminole Wars. The long
struggle culminating in the Civil War was simply to settle the status of
the Negro in the Republic; and the legislation after the war determined
for a generation the history not only of the South but very largely of
the nation as well. The later disfranchising acts have had overwhelming
importance, the unfair system of national representation controlling the
election of 1916 and thus the attitude of America in the world war.

This is an astonishing phenomenon--this vast influence of a people
oppressed, proscribed, and scorned. The Negro is so dominant in American
history not only because he tests the real meaning of democracy, not
only because he challenges the conscience of the nation, but also
because he calls in question one's final attitude toward human nature
itself. As we have seen, it is not necessarily the worker, not even
the criminal, who makes the ultimate problem, but the simple Negro of
whatever quality. If this man did not have to work at all, and if his
race did not include a single criminal, in American opinion he would
still raise a question. It is accordingly from the social standpoint
that we must finally consider the problem. Before we can do this we need
to study the race as an actual living factor in American life; and even
before we do that it might be in order to observe the general importance
of the Negro to-day in any discussion of the racial problems of the
world.

1. _World Aspect_

Any consideration of the Negro Problem in its world aspect at the
present time must necessarily be very largely concerned with Africa as
the center of the Negro population. This in turn directs attention to
the great colonizing powers of Europe, and especially to Great Britain
as the chief of these; and the questions that result are of far-reaching
importance for the whole fabric of modern civilization. No one can
gainsay the tremendous contribution that England has made to the world;
every one must respect a nat