Characterological transformation, the hard work miracle

the long version

Introduction: Mr. Mellon's illuminating presentation of the views of some of the founding fathers on slavery and the Negro exposes the raw nerve of American democratic society. If the central theme of the American Revolution was freedom and equality, the impact of that epochal struggle upon the black man was at best peripheral. The Declaration of Independence had dedicated the Revolution to the proposition that "all men are created equal." There were some who wondered whether that proposition would be applied to the ending of slavery, the greatest of all human inequalities.