Any class with special privileges is
necessarily conservative.
The intimate association of "officer" and "gentleman," a legacy of
feudal days, is not without significance. An officer must also be a
gentleman, and "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" is
erected into an offence punishable by dismissal from the service. The
word "gentleman" has got far away from the strict significance of its
French parent. De Tocqueville has made us see the process of this
development. Passing over to England, with the changing conditions,
"gentleman" was used to describe persons lower and lower in the social
scale, until, when it crossed to this country, its significance became
lost in an indiscriminate application to all citizens[27]. A flavor of
its caste significance still remains in the traditional "high sense of
honor" characteristic of our military service. It was a distant step
for a slave and freedman to become an officer and gentleman.
While the above reflections may be some explanations _in fact_ for the
opposition to the commissioning of Negroes, there was no one with
hardihood enough to bring them forward. Such notions might form the
groundwork of a prejudice, but they could not become the reason of a
policy. It is an instinctive tribute to the good sense of the American
people that the opponents of colored officers were compelled to find
reasons of another kind for their antagonism.
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