  Du Bois criticizes histories that discuss slavery with moral “impartially,” depicting America as helpless and the south as blameless, while explaining the difference in development, North and South, as “a sort of working out of cosmic social and economic law” (1935, 585). An example of this sort of history is Charles and Mary Beard’s The Rise of American Civilization, which treats the clash between north and south as if it were a clash between winds and waters. In the Beard’s “sweeping mechanistic interpretation” of history, Du Bois writes, “there is no room for the real plot of the story, for the clear mistake and guilt of rebuilding a new slavery of the working class in the midst of a fateful experiment in democracy; for the triumph of sheer moral courage and sacrifice in the abolition crusade; and for the hurt and struggle of degraded black millions in their fight for freedom and their attempt to enter democracy. Can all this be omitted and half suppressed in a treatise that calls itself scientific?” (1935, 585).