INTRODUCTORY.

To write the history of the Negro race within that part of the western world known as the United States of America would be a task to which one might devote a life time and still fail in its satisfactory accomplishment.  The difficulties lying in the way of collecting and unifying the material are very great; and that of detecting the inner life of the people much greater.  Facts and dates are to history what color and proportion are to the painting.  Employed by genius, color and form combine in a language that speaks to the soul, giving pleasure and instruction to the beholder; so the facts and dates occurring along the pathway of a people, when gathered and arranged by labor and care, assume a voice and a power which they have not otherwise.  As these facts express the thoughts and feelings, and the growth, of a people, they become the language in which that people writes its history, and the work of the historian is to read and interpret this history for the benefit of his fellow men.

Borrowing a second illustration from the work of the artist, it may be said, that as nature reveals her secrets only to him whose soul is in deepest sympathy with her moods and movements, so a people’s history can be discovered only by one whose heart throbs in unison with those who have made the history.  To write the history of any people successfully one must read it by the heart; and the best part of history, like the best part of the picture, must ever remain unexpressed.  The artist sees more, and feels more than he is able to transfer to his canvas, however entrancing his presentation; and the historian sees and feels more than his brightest pages convey to his readers.  Nothing less than a profound respect and love for humankind and a special attraction toward a particular people and age, can fit one to engage in so sublime a task as that of translating the history of a people into the language of common men.

The history of the American Negro differs very widely from that of any people whose life-story has been told; and when it shall come to be known and studied will open an entirely new view of experience.  In it we shall be able to see what has never before been discovered in history; to wit:  the absolute beginning of a people.  Brought to these shores by the ship-load as freight, and sold as merchandise; entirely broken away from the tribes, races, or nations of their native land; recognized only, as African slaves, and forbidden all movement looking toward organic life; deprived of even the right of family or of marriage, and corrupted in the most shameless manner by their powerful and licentious oppressors—­it is from this heterogeneous protoplasm that the American Negro has been developed.  The foundation from which he sprang had been laid by piecemeal as the slave ships made their annual deposits of cargoes brought from different points on the West Coast, and