since the sainted Lincoln went his way, leaving behind him a trail of glory, shining like the sun; in the path of which, freed through the mandate of his great soul, marched four million negroes, now swollen to twelve, their story, the saddest epic of the ages, of whom and in behalf of whom their children; the generation now and those to come, this History was collated and arranged.  It is an evangel proclaiming to the world, their unsullied patriotism; their rapid fire loyalty, that through all the years of the nation’s life, has never flickered—­

     “Has burned and burned Forever the same”,

from Lexington to the cactus groves of Mexico; in the slaughter hells of Europe; over fields and upon spots where, in the centuries gone, the legions of Caesar, of Hannibal and Attila, of Charlemagne and Napoleon had fought and bled, and perished!  Striding “Breast forward” beneath the Stars and Stripes as this History crowds them on your gaze, through the dust of empires and kingdoms that; before the Christ walked the earth; before Christianity had its birth, wielded the sceptres of power when civilization was young, but which are now but vanishing traditions.

You are thrilled!  History nor story affords no picture more inspiring.

Making due allowance—­

For its nearness to the living and dead, whose heroic and transcendant achievements on the battle spots of the great war secured for them a distinction and fame that will endure until—­

     “The records of valor decay”,

it is a most notable publication, quite worthy to be draped in the robes that distinguishes History from narrative; from “a tale that is told”; a story for the entertainment of the moment.

As interpolated—­

By the writers of its text; read between the lines of their written words; it is a History; not alone of the American Negro on the “tented field”; the bloody trenches of France and Belgium, it is also a History and an arraignment, a warning and a prophecy, looking backwards and forward, the Negro being the objective focus, of many things.

It presents—­

For the readers retrospection, as vividly as painted on a canvas, a phantasmagoric procession of past events, and of those to come in the travail of the Negro; commencing with the sailing of the first “Slaver’s Ship” for the shores of the “New World”, jammed fore and aft, from deck to hold, with its cargo of human beings, to the conclusion of the great war in which, individually and in units he wrote his name in imperishable characters, and high on the scroll on which are inscribed the story of those, who, in their lives wrought for right and, passing, died for men!  For a flag; beneath and within its folds his welcome has been measured and parsimonious;—­a country; the construing and application of its laws and remedies as applied to him, has inflicted intolerable injustice:  Has persecuted more often than blessed.  And so and thus, its perusal finished, its pages closed and laid aside, you are shaken and swayed in your feelings, even as a tree, bent and riven before the march and sweep of a mighty hurricane.