FOOTNOTES:
[25] See "Outline History of the Ninth (Separate) Battalion Ohio Volunteer Infantry," by the Battalion Adjutant, Lieutenant Nelson Ballard, following the close of this chapter.
CHAPTER XII.
COLORED OFFICERS.
By Captain Frank R. Steward, A.B., LL.B., Harvard, Forty-ninth U.S. Volunteer Infantry—Appendix.
Of all the avenues open to American citizenship the commissioned ranks of the army and navy have been the stubbornest to yield to the newly enfranchised. Colored men have filled almost every kind of public office or trust save the Chief Magistracy. They have been members of both Houses of Congress, and are employed in all the executive branches of the Government, but no Negro has as yet succeeded in invading the commissioned force of the navy, and his advance in the army has been exceedingly slight. Since the war, as has been related, but three Negroes have been graduated from the National Military Academy at West Point; of these one was speedily crowded out of the service; another reached the grade of First Lieutenant and died untimely; the third, First Lieutenant Charles Young, late Major of the 9th Ohio Battalion, U.S. Volunteers, together with four colored Chaplains, constitute the sole colored commissioned force of our Regular Army.