“With equal unanimity the draft executives report that the amount of willful delinquency or desertion has been almost nil.  Several describe the strenuous efforts of the Negroes to comply with the regulations, when the requirements were explained to them, many registrants travelling long distances to report in person to the adjutant general of the state.  ’The conviction resulting from these reports’ says General Crowder, ’is that the colored men as a whole responded readily and gladly to their military obligations once their duties were understood.”

So far as the records show, there were neither “slackers” nor “pacifists” among the Negroes.  Hon. Emmett J. Scott, Special Assistant to the Secretary of War, said that the war department had heard of only two colored “conscientious objectors”.  When those two were cross-examined it was revealed that they had misinterpreted their motives and that their objections proceeded from a source very remote from their consciences.

Pacifists and conscientious objectors came principally from the class who held religious scruples against war or the taking up of arms.  The law permitted these to enter a special so-called non-combatant classification.

It is a well known fact that Negro religionists are members of the church militant, so they could not be included in the self-declared conscientious pacifistic sects.

Neither was the Negro represented in that class known as draft resisters or draft evaders.  A very good reason exists in the fact that opposition to the draft came from a class which did not admit the Negro to membership.  Practically all draft resistance was traceable to the activities of radicals, whose fantastic dreams enchanted and seduced the ignorant and artless folk who came under their influence.

The resisters were all poor whites led by professional agitators.  Negroes had no such organizations nor leaders.

The part played by the Negro in the great world drama upon which the curtain has fallen, was not approached in sublime devotion by that displayed by any other class of America’s heterogeneous mixture of tribe and race, hailing from all the ends of the earth, that composes its great and wonderful population.  Blind in a sense; unreasoning as a child in the sacredness and consecration of his fealty; clamoring with the fervor of an ancient crusader; his eye on heaven, his steps turned towards the Holy Sepulchre, for a chance to go; a time and place to die, his was a distinct and marked patriotism; quite alone in “splendid isolation” but shining like the sun; unstreaked with doubt; unmixed with cavil or question, which, finally given reign on many a spot of strife in “Sunny France”; the Stars and Stripes above him; a prayer in his heart; a song upon his lips, spelt death, but death glorious; where he fell—­Holy ground!