Two Northern States, Illinois and Kansas, and
one Southern State, North Carolina, put each in the field as part of
its quota a regiment of colored troops officered throughout by colored
men. Ohio and Indiana contributed each a separate battalion of colored
soldiers entirely under colored officers.
In 1863 a regiment of colored troops with colored officers was
practically impossible. In 1898 a regiment of colored volunteers
without some colored officers was almost equally impossible. In 1863
a regiment of colored soldiers commanded by colored officers would
have been a violation of the sentiment of the period and an outrage
upon popular feelings, the appearance of which in almost any Northern
city would hardly fail to provoke an angry and resentful mob. At that
period, even black recruits in uniforms were frequently assaulted in
the streets of Northern cities. We have seen already how Sergeant
Rivers, of the First South Carolina Volunteers, had to beat off a mob
on Broadway in New York city. In 1898 regiments and battalions of
colored troops, with colored colonels and majors in command, came out
of States where the most stringent black laws were formerly in force,
and were greeted with applause as they passed on their way to their
camps or to embark for Cuba.
In Baltimore, in 1863, the appearance of a Negro in the uniform of an
army surgeon started a riot, and the irate mob was not appeased until
it had stripped the patriotic colored doctor of his shoulder-straps.
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