Both of these assertions have been
emphatically answered in fact, the former as shown above, and the
latter as will be shown later in this volume. These assertions are
only temporary covers, behind which discomfitted and retreating
prejudice is able to make a brief stand, while the black hero of five
hundred battle-fields, marches proudly by, disdaining to lower his gun
to fire a shot on a foe so unworthy. When the Second Massachusetts
Volunteers sent up their hearty cheers of welcome to the gallant old
Twenty-fifth, as that solid column fresh from El Caney swung past its
camp, I remarked to Sergeant Harris, of the Twenty-fifth: "Those men
think you are soldiers." "They know we are soldiers," was his reply.
When the people of this country, like the members of that
Massachusetts regiment, come to know that its black men in uniform are
soldiers, plain soldiers, with the same interests and feelings as
other soldiers, of as much value to the government and entitled from
it to the same attention and rewards, then a great step toward the
solution of the prodigious problem now confronting us will have been
taken.
* * * * *
Note.--"I had often heard that the physique of the men of
our regular army was very remarkable, but the first time I
saw any large body of them, which was at Tampa, they
surpassed my highest expectations.
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