The outbreak of the Spanish War brought the question of colored
officers prominently to the front. The colored people began at once to
demand that officers of their own race be commissioned to command
colored volunteers. They were not to be deluded by any extravagant
praise of their past heroic services, which veiled a determination to
ignore their just claims. So firmly did they adhere to their demands
that but one volunteer regiment of colored troops, the Third Alabama,
could be induced to enter the service with none of its officers
colored. But the concessions obtained were always at the expense of
continuous and persistent effort, and in the teeth of a very active
and at times extremely violent opposition. We know already the kind of
opposition the Eighth Illinois, the Twenty-third Kansas, and the Third
North Carolina Regiments, officered entirely by colored men,
encountered. It was this opposition, as we have seen, which confined
colored officers to positions below the grade of captain in the four
immune regiments. From a like cause, we know also, distinguished
non-commissioned officers of the four regular regiments of colored
troops were allowed promotion only to Lieutenantcies in the immune
regiments, and upon the muster out of those organizations, were
compelled, if they desired to continue soldiering, to resume their
places as enlisted men.
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