"ELI PERKINS."
(From the Savannah (Ga.) Morning-News.)
"Lieutenant Flipper seems to have gone back on his Atlanta friends. He came home from West Point with a good Academy record, behaved himself with becoming dignity. The officers at the barracks treated him— not socially, but as an officer of the army—with due respect, as did the citizens of Atlanta, who felt that he had won credit by his good conduct and success. But in an evil hour the colored friends (?) of Flipper gave him a reception, and in full uniform he made them a speech. Now speech-making is a dangerous thing, and this colored warrior seems to have been made a victim of it. He distorted the official courtesies of the officers at the barracks into social courtesies, and abused the white people of the South because they did not give him and his race social equality. Not only were sensible colored people displeased with his remarks, but many white citizens who went to the meeting friendly to Flipper left disgusted with his sentiments."*
*If a man walks on the streets with me, invites me to his quarters, introduces me to his comrades, and other like acts of courtesy, ought I to consider him treating me socially or officially? I went to the garrison in Atlanta to pay my respects to the commanding officer. I expected nothing. I met an officer, who, with four others, had introduced himself to me on the cars. My official call had been made. He took me around, introduced me to the officers, and showed me all possible attention. I met another officer in the city several days after this. He offered cigars. We walked up and down the streets together. Many times did we hear and comment upon the remarks we overheard: "Is he walking with that nigger?" and the like. He invited me into a druggist's to take some soda- water. I went in and got it, although it was never sold there before to a person of color. We rode out to the garrison together, and every attention was shown me by all. Another officer told me that before I came the officers of the garrison assembled to consider whether or not they should recognize me. The unanimous vote was "yes." Was all this official? No. It is the white people, the disappointed tyrants of Georgia, who try to distort social courtesies in official ones. The "many white" people were some half-dozen newspaper reporters, whose articles doubtless were partly written when they came. "Old Si" in his spectacles was prominently conspicuous among them.
(From the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News.)
A COLORED ARMY OFFICER.
"Lieutenant Flipper is his name. He is a living result of the policy of Radicalism which has declared from the first its determination that, under any circumstances, the American citizen of African descent shall enjoy all the privileges of his white brethren. Carrying out this determination, and not dismayed at the fate of colored cadet Smith, who figured so largely in West Point annals a few years ago, cadet Flipper was sent to that institution to try his hand. He has graduated, and now holds the commission of Second Lieutenant of Cavalry in the United States Army, the first of his race who has ever attained such a position.
"It will be curious to watch young Flipper's career as an officer. Time was when army officers were a very aristocratic and exclusive set of gentlemen, whether they still hold to their old ideas, or not, we do not know. There seems to be enough of the old feeling left, however, to justify the belief that until some other descendants of African parents graduate at the institution, Flipper will have a lonely time. During his cadetship, we learn from no less an authority than the New York Tribune, 'the paper founded by Horace Greeley,' that he was let severely alone by his fellow-students. According to that paper, one of the cadets said, 'We have no feeling against him, but we could not associate with him. It may have been prejudice but still we couldn't do it.' This shows very clearly the animus which will exist in the army against the colored officer. If at West Point, where he had to drill, recite, eat, and perhaps sleep with his white brothers, they couldn't associate with him (notwithstanding the fact that the majority of these whites were Northern men and ardent advocates of Radicalism, with its civil rights and social equality record), how can it be expected that they will overcome their prejudices any more readily after they become officers. The Tribune thinks they will, and that in time the army will not hesitate to receive young Flipper, and all of his race who may hereafter graduate at West Point, with open arms; but the chances are that the Tribune is wrong. Your model Yankee is very willing to use the negro as a hobby- horse upon which to ride into place and power, but when it comes to inviting him to his house and embracing him as a brother he is very apt to be found wanting. The only society Lieutenant of Cavalry Flipper can ever hope to enjoy is that which will exist when there are enough of his race in the army to form a corps d'Afrique, and by that time he will be too old to delight in social pleasures. Meanwhile he will be doomed to a life of solitude and self-communings, and be subjected to many such snubs as the venerable Frederick Douglass has but recently received at the hands of that champion mourner for the poor African— Rutherford B, Hayes."
The New York Tribune is right. The army is officered by men, not by West Point cadets, who are only students and boys.
(From the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News.)