“The fittest place where man can die Is where he dies for man!”

A product of slavery, ushered into a sphere of civil and political activity, clouded and challenged by the sullen resentment of his former masters; his soul still embittered by defeat; slowly working his way through many hindrances toward the achievement of success that would enable both him and the world to justify the new life of freedom that had come to him; faced at every hand by the prejudice born of tradition; enduring wrongs that “would stir a fever in the blood of age”; still the slave to a large extent of superstition fed by ignorance, is it to be wondered at that some doubt was felt and expressed by the best friends of the Negro, when the call came for a draft upon the man power of the nation; whether, in the face of the great wrongs heaped upon him; the persecutions he had passed through and was still enduring, he would be able to forgive and forget; could and would so rise above his sorrows as to reach to the height and the full duty of citizenship; would give to the Stars and Stripes the response that was due?  On the part of many leaders among the Negroes, there was apprehension that the sense of fair play and fair dealing, which is so essentially an American characteristic, when white men are involved, would not be meted out to the members of their race.

How groundless such fears, may be seen from the statistical record of the draft with relation to the Negro.  His race furnished its quota uncomplainingly and cheerfully.  History, indeed, will be unable to record the fullness and grandeur of his spirit in the war, for the reason that opportunities, especially for enlistment, as heretofore mentioned, were not opened to him to the same extent as to the whites.  But enough can be gathered from the records to show that he was filled not only with patriotism, but of a brand, all things considered, than which there was no other like it.

That the men of the Negro race were as ready to serve as the white is amply proved by the reports of local boards.  A Pennsylvania board, remarking upon the eagerness of its Negro registrants to be inducted, illustrated it by the action of one registrant, who, upon learning that his employer had had him placed upon the Emergency Fleet list, quit his job.  Another registrant who was believed by the board to be above draft age insisted that he was not, and in stating that he was not married, explained that he “wanted only one war at a time.”

The following descriptions from Oklahoma and Arkansas boards are typical, the first serving to perpetuate one of the best epigrams of the war: