At Port Hudson, May, 1863, six times the battalion unsuccessfully charged against the foe, Captain Cailloux, so black that he was proud of his color, leading on and refusing to leave the field, though wounded, until killed by a shell. The colors returned, but dyed with the blood of the brave Plancianos, who had reported to God from that bloody field. George H. Boker, the poet, immortalizes the engagement in "The Black Regiment."

At Milliken's Bend, garrisoned by the Ninth and Eleventh Louisiana and the First Mississippi, Negroes, and about one hundred and sixty of the Twenty-third Iowa, white, about eleven hundred fighting men in all, defended themselves against a force of six Confederate regiments from 3 A. M. to 12 noon, when rescued by a Union gunboat.

On July 18, 1863, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, in their charge against Fort Wagner, won undying fame. It was here that Flag-Sergeant William H. Carney, though wounded, bore the flag back in safety, though falling exhausted from the loss of blood, and exclaiming, "Boys, the Old Flag never touched the ground."

In Virginia in the armies of the James and the Potomac, the prowess of the Negro soldier elicited praise from commanding officers as well as from an admiring world. Major C. A. Fleetwood, with pardonable pride, says: "The true metal of the Negro as a soldier rang out its clearest notes amid the tremendous diapason that rolled back and forth between the embattled hosts!"

It was September 29, 1864, at New Market Heights and Fort Harrison, that only one of a color guard of the 4th U. S. C. T., twelve men, came off the field on his own feet. This gallant flag-sergeant, Hilton, the last to fall, cried out as he went down, "Boys, save the colors," and they were saved. It was at New

1 Fleetwood was a medal of honor man; for other Colored Honor Men, see Appendix.

2

Market Heights that owing to the loss of their commissioned officers, six non-commissioned officers, Milton M. Holland, James H. Bronson, Powhattan Beatty, Robert Pinn, Edward Ratcliff and Samuel Gilchrist, led their men so nobly, so bravely, so skillfully, that they were given special medals of honor. It was of this engagement that Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, a Representative in Congress, thus spoke ten years after: "There in a space not wider than the clerk's desk, and three hundred yards long, lay the dead bodies of 543 of my colored comrades, slain in the defence of their country, who had lain down their lives to uphold its flag and its honor as a willing sacrifice. And as I rode along, guiding my horse this way and that lest he should profane with his hoofs what seemed to me the sacred dead, and as I looked at their bronzed faces, upturned in the shining sun, as if in mute appeal against the wrongs of the country for which they had given their lives, and whose flag had been to them a flag of stripes, in which no star of glory had ever shone for them. Feeling I had wronged them in the past, and believing what was the future duty of my country to them, I swore a solemn oath, 'May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I ever fail to defend the rights of the men who have given their blood for me and my country that day and for their race forever.' And, God helping me, I will keep that oath.”

2 January 7, 1874.

XV

THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

THE sinking of the battleship Maine in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, on the night of February 15, 1898, wrought the American people to such a pitch that war between the United States and Spain was inevitable. This was declared April 21, and a blockade of the Cuban ports effected the next day. Cessation of hostilities was announced by a proclamation of President McKinley, August 12, 1898, and peace concluded by treaty ratified February 6, 1899. Cuba became a Republic, independent of Spain; Porto Rico was annexed to the United States and the Philippines became part of our insular possessions. In short, the United States, hitherto restricted in authority to the continent of North America, became a world-wide power.

In this struggle between the United States and Spain, compressed within an active period of less than four months, the Negro soldier won a distinction surpassing, if possible, that of his fame in the Revolution, the War of 1812 or that for the preservation of the Union.

At the beginning of hostilities four regiments of colored soldiers in the regular army establishment, the Twenty-fourth, and Twenty-fifth United States Infantry, and the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry comprised the entire representation of the Negro in the army; but during the brief progress of the war this quota was increased by one company, of the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry, the Ninth Ohio Battalion,1 companies A and B of the

1 Major Chas. Young, a Negro graduate of West Point Academy.

First Indiana, the Eighth Illinois regiment, two battalions of the Twenty-third Kansas, the Third North Carolina regiment, the Second South Carolina, the Third Alabama and two battalions of the Sixth Virginia. To these must be added what are otherwise known as the immunes, for service in the Philippines, the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth U. S. Volunteers. The officers in the Eighth Illinois, the Twenty-third Kansas and the Ohio battalion, line and field, were colored; only the line officers in the other commands were colored men.

No regiment South of Mason and Dixon's line was actually engaged on the fighting line in Cuba during the short conflict, but all the four colored regiments from the immunes of the colored volunteers saw service on the island of Cuba.

There was nevertheless no hesitation in the response of the South to the call for troops; but before their troops were mustered in the service and could reach the front the real work had been accomplished. There were, however, white commissioned officers that had seen service on the Confederate side during the Civil War, who distinguished themselves in the Spanish American War. Among these were Generals Fitzhugh Lee of Virginia and Joseph Wheeler of Alabama. Sons of veterans of Federals and Confederates alike received lieutenancies and higher commissions, but no such honor was given the son of a Negro veteran. The Negro officer had once more to win his spurs and demonstrate his fitness for the honors grudgingly awarded him by State and Nation. President McKinley, it is reported, had declared his intention of promoting to a brigadiership some Negro soldier before the end of the struggle, and the prospect seemed assured when there were brigaded regiments in Cuba; but on the eve of the retirement of its commanding officer, the officer next in line, being Major Charles Young, the brigade was suddenly disbanded by order of General Henry A. Corbin, who though he had commanded colored troops in the Civil War, is held responsible for the failure of the colored

soldier to receive high commissions during the Spanish-American War.

At the Battle of El Caney the capture of the stone fort was due to the gallantry of the Twenty-fifth Infantry; at San Juan the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry regiments distinguished themselves, as did the Twenty-fourth Infantry. The surrender of the Spanish forces followed shortly afterwards and as indicated, the war speedily came to an end.

Another correspondent thus expresses the situation:

"American valor never shone with greater luster than when the Twenty-fifth Infantry swept up the sizzling hill of El Caney to the rescue of the Rough Riders. Two other regiments came into view, but the bullets were flying like driving hail, the enemy were in trees and ambushes with smokeless powder, and the Rough Riders were biting the dust and were threatened with annihilation.”*

There are many thrilling incidents testifying to the bravery of the colored soldiers in this war. Stephen Bonsal, a newspaper correspondent, expresses what was well nigh the universal opinion. This is what he said: "It is a fact that the services of no four white regiments can be compared with those rendered by the four colored regiments-the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry. They were to the front at La Guasima, at Caney and at San Juan, and in what was the severest test of all that came later in the yellow fever hospitals.

"L" Company is the oldest military organization among the colored people of this country. It dates back to 1782, when the Bucks of America was formed in Boston and was so far as authentic history points out, the first independent military company of America. This military company was made up of Negroes living in or near Boston,

* Theodore Roosevelt was with the Rough Riders. In saving them, these black regiments saved for New York a governor and for the United States a president.