[24]
The mustering out of the volunteers about the time this opposition was
approaching what appeared to be a climax, causing the removal from the
service of the colored officers, appeased the wrath of the demon, and
the waves of the storm gradually sank to a peace, gratifying, indeed,
to those who shuddered to see a black man with shoulder-straps. As the
last Negro officer descended from the platform and honorably laid
aside his sword to take his place as a citizen of the Republic, or a
private in her armies, that class of our citizenship breathed a sigh
of relief. What mattered it to them whether justice were done; whether
the army were weakened; whether individuals were wronged; they were
relieved from seeing Negroes in officers' uniforms, and that to them
is a most gracious portion. The discharge of the volunteers was to
them the triumph of their prejudices, and in it they took great
comfort, although as a matter of fact it was a plain national movement
coming about as a logical sequence, entirely independent of their
whims or wishes. The injustice to the Negro officer does not lie in
his being mustered out of the volunteer service, but in the failure to
provide for a recognition of his valor in the nation's permanent
military establishment.
The departure of the colored man from the volunteer service was the
consequent disappearance of the colored military officer, with the
single exception of Lieutenant Charles Young of the Regular Cavalry,
had a very depressing effect upon the colored people at large, and
called forth from their press and their associations most earnest
protests.
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