ABSTRACT

A major thesis of the present work was anticipated by W.E. B. DuBois back in 1890 (as

indicated by the fragment recorded in Foner, 1970, “Introduction”): the thesis of the

“strong man” who renounces love as a way of being strong, who employs force as a way

of “advancing civilization;” the dangerous consequences of this idea(l) and of a state that

patterns itself after this idea(l). In his graduation speech at Harvard, DuBois used the

theme “Jefferson Davis as a representative of civilization” to develop this thesis. DuBois

treated Jefferson Davis as a typical representative of “Teutonic civilization,” an

embodiment of the idea of the strong man (Foner, 1970, p. 1). According to DuBois:

The Strong Man and his mighty Right Arm has become the Strong Nation with

its armies. Under whatever guise, however, a Jefferson Davis may appear as

man, as race, or as nation, his life can only logically mean this: the advance of a

part of the world at the expense of the whole; the overweening sense of the “I”

and the consequent forgetting of the “Thou” (DuBois, 1970).