"'ISRAEL SMITH.'"
"On the 11th of January I visited West Point again. I found all the cadets still against the colored boy. A system of terrorism reigned supreme. Every one who did not take sides against the colored boy was ostracized.
"At drill one morning Cadet Anderson trod on the colored boy's toes. When Smith expostulated Anderson replied, 'Keep your— toes away.' When Smith told about it Anderson got two other white cadets to say he never said so. This brought the colored boy in a fix.
"Last July I saw the colored cadet again. He was still ostracized. No cadet ever spoke to him. He lived a, hermit life, isolated and alone.
"When I asked him how he got on with his studies he said: 'As well as I am able, roaming all alone, with no one to help me and no one to clear up the knotty points. If there is an obscure point in my lesson I must go to the class with it. I cannot go to a brother cadet.'
"'If you should ask them to help you what would they say?'
"'They would call me a — nigger, and tell me to go back to the plantation.'
"Yesterday, after watching the colored cadet for three years, I saw him again. He has grown tall and slender. He talks slowly, as if he had lost the use of language. Indeed many days and weeks he has gone without saying twenty lines a day in a loud voice, and that in the recitation-room.
"When they were examining him the other day he spoke slowly, but his answers were correct. His answers in philosophy were correct. But they say he answered slowly, and they will find him deficient for that. Find him deficient for answering slowly when the boy almost lost the use of language! When he knew four hundred eyes were on him and two hundred malign arts all praying for his failure!
"The colored cadet is now in his third year. The great question at West Point is, Will he pass his examination? No one will know till the 30th of June. It is my impression that the young officers have marked him so low that he will be found deficient. The young officers hate him almost as bad as the cadets, and whenever they could make a bad mark against him they have done it.