T. G. Steward

“ 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. ”

“ The nation, which had received them into the service half-heartedly, and out of necessity, was that day made to witness a monotony of gallantry and heroism that compelled everywhere awe and admiration. Black soldiers, and led by black officers as well as white, assigned a task hopeless and impossible at the start, had plunged into that withering storm of shot and shell, poured fourth by artillery and infantry, charging over a field strewn with obstacles, and in madness of bravery had more than once thrown the thin head of their column to the very edge of the guns. ”

“ The world seemed suddenly to have expanded its wings from East to West, only to bear the fortunate Spanish Empire to the most dizzy heights of wealth and power. The most accomplished generals, the most disciplined and daring infantry the world has ever known, the best equipped and most extensive navy, royal and mercantile, of the age, were at the absolute command of the sovereign. Such was Spain. ”

“ For their distinguished service both in the field and in the hospital, the colored ladies of New York honored themselves in presenting the regiment the beautiful stand of colors already mentioned. As these fever-worn veterans arrived at Montauk they presented a spectacle well fitted to move strong men to tears. In solemn silence they marched from on board the transport Nueces, which had brought them from Cuba, and noiselessly they dragged their weary forms over the sandy roads and up the hill to the distant "detention camp." ”

“ The history made by the American Negro has been so filled with suffering that we have overlooked the active side. The world has heard so much of the horrors of the "Middle Passage"; the awful sufferings of the slave; the barbarous outrages that have been perpetrated upon ex-slaves; the inhuman and senseless prejudices that meet colored Americans almost everywhere on their native soil; that it has come to look upon this recital as the whole of the story. ”

“ The whole continent of South America has thrown off her yoke, though still retaining her language, and our troops now embarked from Port Tampa are destined to wrest from her the two only remaining colonies subject to her sway in the Western World,—Cuba and Porto Rico. With all her losses hitherto, Spain has not learned wisdom. Antagonistic to truth and liberty, she seems to sit in the shadow of death, hugging the delusions that have betrayed her, while all other people of earth are pressing onward toward light and liberty. ”

“ The nation was, however, led into war simply to liberate Cuba from the iniquitous and cruel yoke of Spain, and to save thousands of impoverished Cubans from death by starvation. Great care was taken not to recognize the Cuban government in any form, and it seemed to be understood that we were to do the fighting both with our navy and our army, the Cubans being invited to co-operate with us, rather than that we should co-operate with them. We were to be the liberators and saviors of a people crushed to the very gates of death. ”

“ Never was there a more solemn hour for any man—and that man the representative of the destiny of South America! Could he hope for success? After the English, who had every interest in the destruction of Spanish colonial power, had treated him with so much indifference, could he hope that a new-born nation, weak, with microscopic territory, and still guarding anxiously its own ill-recognized independence, would risk itself in an enterprise hazardous as the one he represented? ”

“ Do you think I will make a soldier? It is one thing to "make a soldier," another thing to have men think so. The question of fact was settled a century ago; the question of opinion is still unsettled. The Negro soldier, hero of five hundred battlefields, with medals and honors resting upon his breast, with the endorsement of the highest military authority of the nation, with Port Hudson, El Caney and San Juan behind him, is still expected by too many to stand and await the verdict of thought, from persons who never did "think" he would make a soldier, and who never will think so. ”

“ To write the history of the Negro race within that part of the western world known as the United States of America would be a task to which one might devote a life time and still fail in its satisfactory accomplishment. The difficulties lying in the way of collecting and unifying the material are very great; and that of detecting the inner life of the people much greater. Facts and dates are to history what color and proportion are to the painting. Employed by genius, color and form combine in a language that speaks to the soul, giving pleasure and instruction to the beholder ”

“ Thousands went to Hayti and to Canada, but the bulk preferred to remain here. They liked America, and had become so thoroughly in love with the doctrines of the Republic, so imbued with the pride of the nation's history, so inspired with hope in the nation's future, that they resolved to live and die on her soil. When the troublous times of 1860 came and white men were fleeing to Canada, colored men remained at their posts. They were ready to stand by the old flag and to take up arms for the Union, trusting that before the close of the strife the flag might have to them a new meaning. ”

“ This short war has done so much for America at home and abroad that we must take every soldier to our warmest affection and send him back to peaceful pursuits on the conviction that there is nothing higher in our American life than to have the privilege to cheer and gladden the marine and the soldier that have left to America her brightest and best page of a great history. ”

“ When the Revolutionary War had closed the brave black soldier who had fought to give to the world a new flag whose every star should be a star of hope to the oppressed, and whose trinity of colors should symbolize Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, found his race, and in some instances himself personally, encased in a cruel and stubborn slavery. For the soldier himself special provision had been made in both Northern and Southern colonies, but it was not always hearty or effective. ”

“ Our officers of the army and navy, and of the army more than of the navy, because the former officers are more constantly within the country, make up the sole separate class of our population. We have no established nobility. Wealth confers no privilege which men are bound to observe. The respect paid to men who attain eminence in science and learning goes only as far as they are known. The titles of the professions are matters of courtesy and customs only. Our judges and legislators, our governors and mayors, are still our "fellow citizens," and the dignity they enjoy is but an honorary one. ”

“ Headquarters, band and the remainder of the First and Tenth U.S. Cavalry were off at 6 A.M. The road was alive with troops (C, D, F, G,) colonels and privates alike lugging their rations and bedding beneath that ever watchful tropical sun, feeling as though they would wilt at every step, the undergrowth being so thick and tall that scarcely any breeze could get to you.
On emerging from this thicket, through which we had been marching for several hours, the Sampson fleet could be heard firing on the Spanish batteries on shore. ”

“ To secure such discipline, and at the same time supply the people with the steady enthusiasm necessary to support a war from century to century, all the terrors and all the glories that could be derived from religion were employed. The church and the state, the prince and the priest, became as one, and loyalty and religion, devotion to the standard and to the cross, were but different names for the same principles and actions. Hence Spain emerged to greatness without the least dream of liberty of either person, conscience or thought. ”

“ Emancipation had just taken place in New York, and had just been arrested in Virginia by the Nat Turner rebellion and Walker's pamphlet. Secret sessions of the legislatures of the several Southern States had been held to deliberate upon the production of a colored man who had coolly recommended to his fellow blacks the only solution to the slave question, which, after twenty-five years of arduous labor of the most hopeful and noble-hearted of the abolitionists, seems the forlorn hope of freedom to-day—insurrection and bloodshed. ”

“ But it was in Hayti that the unmixed Negro rose to the full dignity of a modern soldier, creating and leading armies, conducting and carrying on war, treating with enemies and receiving surrenders, complying fully with the rules of civilized warfare, and evolving finally a Toussaint, whose military genius his most bitter enemies were compelled to recognize—Toussaint, who to the high qualities of the soldier added also the higher qualities of statesmanship. ”

“ Are we destined to see the African element of America's population blend with the Euro-American element and be lost in a common people? Will the colored American leave this home in which as a race he has been born and reared to manhood, and find his stage of action somewhere else on God's earth? Will he remain here as a separate and subordinate people perpetuating the conditions of to-day only that they may become [pg 15] more humiliating and exasperating? Or is there to arise a war of races in which the blacks are to be exterminated? ”

“ Yet Denver welcomes the one with open arms and salutes with marked favor, while she barely suffered the other to remain.
Had it been a negro soldier who committed the dastardly deed of Saturday night the War Department would have been deluged with complaints and requests for removal, but not a word has been said against the 34th. Prejudice and hatred blacker than the wings of night has so envenomed the breasts of the people that fairness is out of the question. Be he black, no matter how noble and good, a man must be despised. ”

“ Beautiful broad roads wind their way to all parts of the ground, along which are placed large tablets recording the events of those dreadful days in the autumn of 1863, when Americans faced Americans in bloody, determined strife. Monuments, judiciously placed, speak with a mute eloquence to the passer-by and tell of the valor displayed by some regiment or battery, or point to the spot where some lofty hero gave up his life. ”

“ What could be more significant, or more fitting, than that these black soldiers, drilled up to the highest standard of modern warfare, cool, brave and confident, themselves a proof of American liberty, should be called first to the front in a war against oppression? ”

“ Within six weeks so many colored men applied for enlistment, and those that had been put out of the army raised such a clamor that Washington changed his policy, and the Negro, who of all America's population contended for the privilege of shouldering a gun to fight for American liberty, was allowed a place in the Continental Army, the first national army organized on this soil, ante-dating the national flag. The Negro soldier helped to evolve the national standard and was in the ranks of the fighting men over whom it first unfolded its broad stripes and glittering stars. ”

“ A few musty, hard tack, thrown in our trenches, were devoured like so much fresh beef, by so many hungry wolves.
Campaigning in the tropics entails many hardships, though unavoidable and only to be expected, in war. War is horrible in any aspect in which it may be viewed. Even those features of it intended to be merciful, are full of harshness and rigor; and after all, fighting is the easiest part.
As the capitulation was complete, and Santiago was our's, we were ordered to change camp to a more healthful locality, with a view to allowing the men to recuperate. ”

“ The colored race then presented itself to me in the character of numerous contrabands of war, and as a people who, individually, yearned for the light and life of liberty. Ages of slavery had reduced them to the lowest ebb of manhood. ”

“ Turner's was the insurrection of the slave and was not free from the mad violence of revenge; Brown's was the insurrection of the friend of the slave, and was governed by the high and noble purpose of freedom. The insurrections of Denmark Vesey in South Carolina, in 1822, and of Nat Turner, in Virginia, in 1831, show conclusively that the Negro slave possessed the courage, the cunning, the secretiveness and the intelligence to fight for his freedom. ”

“ Of the thousands who are going to Cuba to magnify the American flag, not all will return. Occasionally the gay music of the bands would relieve the dull routine and cause the spirits to rise under the effects of some enlivening waltz or stirring patriotic air; or entering a school of flying fish the men would be entertained to see these broad-finned creatures dart from the waves like arrows from the bow, and after a graceful flight of perhaps near two hundred yards drop again into the sea ”

“ Too many journalists and correspondents were permitted to witness the work of Spanish sharpshooters, and to see their obstinate resistance to the advance of our troops, to allow comments upon the inefficiency of the Spanish Army to pass unnoticed. Our army from the beginning was well impressed with the character of the foe and nerved itself accordingly. The bravery of our own soldiers was fully recognized by the men who surrendered to our army and who were capable of appreciating it, because they themselves were not wanting in the same qualities. ”