These are the officers for whom the War Department had erected their arbitrary bar at captaincy, and declared that no show of efficiency could secure for them the titular rank which they more than once actually exercised.  For they were repeatedly in command of their companies through sickness or absence of their captains.  They served as officers without the incentive which comes from hope of promotion.  They were forced to see the credit of their labors go to others, and to share more than once in discredit for which they were not responsible.  They were, and in this lay their chief embarrassment, without the security and protection which higher rank would have accorded them.  In case of trial by court-martial, captains and other higher officers filled the court to the exclusion of almost all others.  These were white men.  It is gratifying to record that the War Department recognized this special injustice to colored officers, and in the two regiments of colored volunteers recruited for service in the Philippines all the line-officers are colored men, the field officers being white, and appointed from the Regular Army in pursuance of a general policy.  Thus far has the general government advanced in recognition of the military capacity of the Negro.  In the swing of the pendulum the nation is now at the place where the hardy General Butler was thirty-seven years ago, when he organized the three regiments of Louisiana Native Guards with all line-officers colored.

The way in which modern armies are organized and perfected leaves little necessity for an equipment of exceptional personal gifts in order to exercise ordinary military command.  The whole thing is subordinate, and the field for personal initiative is contracted to the minimum.  In our own army the President is Commander-in-Chief, and the command descends through a multitude of subordinate grades down to the lowest commissioned officer in the service.  We have “Articles of War” and “Regulations,” and the entire discipline and government of the army is committed to writing.  There is no chance to enshroud in mystery the ability to command.  For ordinary military command, with intelligence the chief requisite, little is required beyond courage, firmness and good judgment.  These qualities are in no respect natural barriers for colored men.

This last story of the Negro soldier’s efficiency and gallantry, told in the pages of this book, teaches its own very simple conclusion.  The Cuban campaign has forced the nation to recognize the completion of the Negro’s evolution as a soldier in the Army of the United States.  The colored American soldier, by his own prowess, has won an acknowledged place by the side of the best trained fighters with arms.  In the fullness of his manhood he has no rejoicing in the patronizing paean, “the colored troops fought nobly,” nor does he glow at all when told of his “faithfulness” and “devotion” to his white officers, qualities accentuated to the