"'What! A meal of victuals for a nigger?' asked the clerk.
"'Yes, Sir, I'm hungry and I should like to buy something to eat.'
"'Well, you'll have to be hungry a good while if you wait to get something to eat here,' and the clerk of the government hotel pushed the colored boy's carpet -bag off upon the floor.
"Jimmy Smith's father, who fought with General Sherman, and came back to become an alderman in Columbia, had told the boy that when he got to West Point among soldiers he would be treated justly, and you can imagine how the hungry boy felt when he trudged back over the hot campus to see Colonel Black and General Schriver, who was then Superintendent of the Academy.
"The black boy came and stood before the commandant and handed him his appointment papers and asked him to read them. Colonel Black, Colonel Boynton, and other officers looked around inquiringly. Then they got up to take a good look at, the first colored cadet. The colonel, red in the face, waved the boy away with his hand, and, one by one, the officers departed, speechless with amazement.
"In a few moments the news spread through the Academy.
The white cadets seemed paralyzed.
"Several cadets threatened to resign, some advocated maiming him for life, and a Democratic 'pleb' from Illinois exclaimed, 'I'd rather die than drill with the black devil.' But wiser counsels prevailed, and the cadets consented to tolerate Jimmy Smith and not drown or kill him for four weeks, when it was thought the examiners would 'bilge' him.
"On the 16th of June, 1870, I saw Jimmy Smith again at West Point and wrote out my experiences. He was the victim of great annoyance.
"At these insults the colored cadet showed a suppressed emotion. He could not break the ranks to chastise his assaulter. Then if he had fought with every cadet who called him a '—black-hearted nigger,' he would have fought with the whole Academy. Not the professors, for they have been as truly gentlemen as they are good officers. If they had feelings against the colored cadet they suppressed them. I say now that the indignities heaped upon Jimmy Smith would have been unbearable to any white boy of spirit. Hundreds of times a day he was publicly called names so mean that I dare not write them.
"Once I met Jimmy Smith after drill. He bore the insulting remarks like a Christian.