The one formula heard always in the campaign against colored officers
was: Negroes cannot command. This formula was sent forth with every
kind of variation, from the fierce fulminations of the hostile
Southern press, to the more apologetic and philosophical discussions
of our Northern secular and religious journals. To be sure, every now
and then, there were exhibitions of impatience against the doctrine.
Not a few newspapers had little tolerance for the nonsense. Some
former commanders of Negro soldiers in the Civil War, notably, General
T.J. Morgan, spoke out in their behalf. The brilliant career of the
black regulars in Cuba broke the spell for a time, but the re-action
speedily set in. In short it became fastened pretty completely in the
popular mind as a bit of demonstrated truth that Negroes could not
make officers; that colored soldiers would neither follow nor obey
officers of their own race.
This formula had of course to ignore an entire epoch of history. It
could take no account of that lurid program wrought in the Antilles a
century ago--a rising mob of rebel slaves, transformed into an
invincible army of tumultuous blacks, under the guidance of the
immortal Toussaint, overcoming the trained armies of three Continental
powers, Spain, England and France, and audaciously projecting a black
republic into the family of nations, a program at once a marvel and a
terror to the civilized world.
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