Henry Ossian Flipper

“ Flipper is described as a little bow-legged grif of the most darkly coppery hue, and of a general pattern that even the most enthusiastic would find it hard to adopt. Flipper is not destined to uphold the virtues and graces of his color in the salons of Boston and New York, then, nor can he hope to escape the disagreeably conspicuous solitude he now inhabits among his fellow-officers through any of those agencies of usage and familiarity which would result if other Flippers were to follow him into the army and help to dull the edge of the innovation. ”

“ The glory of free America, her recognition of equality of all men, is not so apparent anywhere else as at West Point. And were prejudice entirely obliterated, then would America in truth be that Utopia of which so many have but dreamed. It is rapidly giving way to better reason, and the day is not far distant when West Point will stand forth as the proud exponent of absolute social equality. Prejudice weakens, and ere long will fail completely. The advent of general education sounds its death knell. ”

“ LIEUTENANT FLIPPER. "When Congress founded West Point, to be a training school for those who were to be paid as public servants and to wear the public livery, we do not think that it was intended that the institution should serve as a hotbed for the fostering of aristocratic prejudices and the assumption of aristocratic airs. Nor do we think that when Lincoln declared the negro a freeman, and entitled to a freeman's rights, either he or the nation designed that the dusky skin of the enfranchised slave should serve as an excuse for ignominy, torture, and disgrace. ”

“ If my manhood cannot stand without a governmental prop, then let it fall. If I am to stand on any other ground than the one white cadets stand upon, then I don't want the cadetship. If I cannot endure prejudice and persecutions, even if they are offered, then I don't deserve the cadetship, and much less the commission of an army officer. But there is a remedy, a way to root out snobbery and prejudice which but needs adoption to have the desired effect. ”

“ Yet here, this year, in the graduating class from West Point, steps a young man among his white- skinned fellows, fiftieth in a class of seventy-six members, whose four years of academic life have been one long martyrdom; who has stood utterly alone, ignored and forsaken among his fellows; who has had not one helping hand from professors or students to aid him in fighting his hard battle, and whom only his own talents and sturdy pluck have saved from entire oblivion. ”

“ Flipper, the colored cadet, stepped forward, and received the reward of four years of as hard work and unflinching courage and perseverance as any young man could be called upon to go through, the crowd of spectators gave him a round of hearty applause. He deserves it. Any one who knows how quietly and bravely this young man—the first of his despised race to graduate at West Point—has borne the difficulties of his position; how for four years he has had to stand apart from his classmates as one with them but not of them ”

“ GENTLEMEN OF THE GRADUATING CLASS: The agreeable duty now devolves upon me of delivering to you the diplomas which the Academic Board have awarded you as Graduates of the Military Academy.
These diplomas you have fairly won by your ability, your industry, and your obedience to discipline. You receive them, not as favors from any body, but as the just and lawful reward of honest and persistent effort.
You have merited, and are about to receive, the highest honors attainable by young men in our country. ”

“ As soon as I show that I have some good qualities, do some act of kindness in spite of insult, my color is forgotten and I am well treated. Again, I have observed that colored men of character and intellectual ability have been treated as men should be by all, whether friends or enemies; that is to say, no prejudice of color or race has ever been manifested.
I have been so treated by men I knew to be—to use a political term—"vile democrats." Unfortunately a bad temper, precipitation, stubbornness, and like qualities, all due to non-education, are too often attributes of colored men and women. ”

“ And upon education in colleges and common schools the pillars of the State assuredly rest.
To participants and to bystanders, this ceremony of graduation is as interesting and as exciting as if this were the first, instead of the seventy-fifth occurrence. Every such occasion is clothed with the splendor of perpetual youth. The secret of your future success lies in the impossibility of your entering into the experience of your predecessors. Every man's life begins with the rising sun. ”

“ Scarcely any paper has considered how the chances of any cadet depended upon himself alone. The authorities of the Academy are, or have been, officers of the army. They are, with one or two exceptions, graduates, and therefore, presumably, "officers and gentlemen." To transform young men into a like ilk as themselves is their duty. The country intrusts them with this great responsibility. To prove faithless to such a charge would be to risk position, and even those dearer attributes of the soldier, honor and reputation. They would not dare ill-treat a colored cadet or a white one. ”

“ I know it was to them most galling, and although I fully felt the responsibility and honor of commanding the guard, I frankly and candidly confess that I found no pleasure in their apparent humiliation.
I am as a matter of course opposed to prejudice, but I nevertheless hold that those who are not have just as much right to their opinions on the matter as they would have to any one of the various religious creeds. We in free America at least would not be justified in forcing them to renounce their views or beliefs on race and color any more than those on religion. ”

“ The war developed some unwelcome truths with regard to this snobbish and disloyal spirit of our national institutions, and the exploits of some volunteer officers showed that all manhood, bravery, skill, and energy were not contained in West Point or Annapolis, or, if there, did not pertain solely to the petty cliques that aim to give tone to those academies. It is not for any officer, the creature of the government —it is not for any student, the willing ward of that government—to say who shall enter the national schools and be the recipients of my bounty. ”

“ It would be expecting too much to hope that the companionship which surmounts or breaks down all the barriers of caste, should tread with equal heel the prejudices of color. But it would be more manly in these boys, if they would remember how easy ordinary courtesy would be to them, how much it would lighten the life of a young man whose rights are equal to their own. It is useless to ignore the inevitable. ”

“ The noise and the necessities of war drive men in upon themselves and keep their faculties awake and alert; but the seductive influence of peace, when a soldier must spend his time in preparation for the duties of his profession rather than in their practice, this is indeed a peril to which the horrors of warfare are subordinate. It is so much easier for men to fight other men than themselves. So much easier to help govern other men than to wholly govern themselves. ”

“ In this cold ague of economy with which the nation is attacked just now, and which leaves old army officers unpaid for a disagreeably long time, the chances of any addition to the flock in the nest are exceedingly small. In fact, while the average American in war time recognized the utility of a trained band of tacticians, he is apt to grumble at their drain upon his pocket in piping times of peace. Only last year he relieved himself in Congress and elsewhere by a good deal of portentous talking as to the expediency of doing away with the naval and military free schools altogether. ”

“ Men of responsibility are concerned, and it is not presumable that they will disregard the requirements of their professions so far as to ill-treat even myself. There is none of the recklessness of the student in their actions, and they cannot but recognize me as having a just claim upon their good-will and honor.
The year wears away—the last year it is too—and I find myself near graduation, with every prospect of success. And from the beginning to the close my life has been one not of trouble, persecution, or punishment, but one of isolation only. ”

“ If my choice be based upon color, am I more wrong in adopting it than I should be in adopting any other reason? it may be an unchristian opinion or fancy that causes me to do it, but such opinion or fancy is my own, and I have a right to it. No one objects to prejudice as such, but to the treatment it is supposed to cause. If one is disposed to ill-treat another, he'll do it, prejudiced or not prejudiced. Only low persons are so disposed, and happily so for West Point, and indeed for the whole country. ”

“ The greatest mistakes in the war were in consequence of just such defects in some of our leading officers, and the slaughter of the Indians in the South- West upon two occasions proceeded from their inability to recognize the rights of men of a different color from themselves. Even in trifles, however, such matters follow the rule of inexorable justice—as, for instance, in this case of Cadet Flipper, who under ordinary circumstances might have passed without notice, but is now known from one end of the country to the other as a credit to his profession in scholarship, pluck, and real dignity ”

“ Indeed, those who do have almost certainly received A highly colored sketch of camp life, and are hastening to sad disappointment, and not at all to the joys they've been led to expect. He marches into the company streets. He surveys them carefully and recognizes what is meant by "the plebes have to do all the policing," servants being an unknown luxury. He also sees the sentry-boxes and the paths the sentinels tread, and shudders as he recollects the tales of midnight adventure which some wily cadet has narrated to him. Imagination begins her cruel work. ”

“ Surely the Constitution would not rob us of the privilege and pleasure of seeing in full military costume the first and only one of our race who has been permitted to pass through West Point with honor. ”