this being represented by the work of such men as Richard Allen and Prince Hall; but, in spite of a new racial consciousness, the great mass of the Negro people remained in much the same situation as before, the increase in numbers incident to the invention of the cotton-gin only intensifying the ultimate problem.  About the year 1830, however, the very hatred and ignominy that began to be visited upon the Negro indicated that at least he was no longer a thing but a person.  Lynching began to grow apace, burlesque on the stage tended to depreciate and humiliate the race, and the South became definitely united in its defense of the system of slavery.  On the other hand, the Abolitionists challenged the attitude that was becoming popular; the Negroes themselves began to be prosperous and to hold conventions; and Nat Turner’s insurrection thrust baldly before the American people the great moral and economic problem with which they had to deal.  With such divergent opinions, in spite of feeble attempts at compromise, there could be no peace until the issue of slavery at least was definitely settled.  The third great period extends from the Civil War to the opening of the Great War in Europe.  Like the others it also falls into two parts, the division coming at the year 1895.  The thirty years from 1865 to 1895 may be regarded as an era in which the race, now emancipated, was mainly under the guidance of political ideals.  Several men went to Congress and popular education began to be emphasized; but the difficulties of Reconstruction and the outrages of the KuKlux Klan were succeeded by an enveloping system of peonage, and by 1890-1895 the pendulum had swung fully backward and in the South disfranchisement had been arrived at as the concrete solution of the political phase of the problem.  The twenty years from 1895 to 1915 formed a period of unrest and violence, but also of solid economic and social progress, the dominant influence being the work of Booker T. Washington.  With the world war the Negro people came face to face with new and vast problems of economic adjustment and passed into an entirely different period of their racial history in America.

This is not all, however.  The race is not to be regarded simply as existent unto itself.  The most casual glance at any such account as we have given emphasizes the importance of the Negro in the general history of the United States.  Other races have come, sometimes with great gifts or in great numbers, but it is upon this one that the country’s history has turned as on a pivot.  It is true that it has been despised and rejected, but more and more it seems destined to give new proof that the stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.  In the colonial era it was the economic advantage of slavery over servitude that caused it to displace this institution as a system of labor.  In the preliminary draft of the Declaration of Independence a noteworthy passage arraigned the