The Colored Regulars in the United States Army

by T. G. Steward

The outbreak of the Spanish War brought the question of colored officers prominently to the front. The colored people began at once to demand that officers of their own race be commissioned to command colored volunteers. They were not to be deluded by any extravagant praise of their past heroic services, which veiled a determination to ignore their just claims. So firmly did they adhere to their demands that but one volunteer regiment of colored troops, the Third Alabama, could be induced to enter the service with none of its officers colored. But the concessions obtained were always at the expense of continuous and persistent effort, and in the teeth of a very active and at times extremely violent opposition. We know already the kind of opposition the Eighth Illinois, the Twenty-third Kansas, and the Third North Carolina Regiments, officered entirely by colored men, encountered. It was this opposition, as we have seen, which confined colored officers to positions below the grade of captain in the four immune regiments. From a like cause, we know also, disti nguished non-commissioned officers of the four regular regiments of colored troops were allowed promotion only to Lieutenantcies in the immune regiments, and upon the muster out of those organizations, were compelled, if they desired to continue soldiering, to resume their places as enlisted men.

There is some explanation for this opposition in the nature of the distinction which military rank confers. Military rank and naval rank constitute the only real distinction among us. Our officers of the army and navy, and of the army more than of the navy, because the former officers are more constantly within the country, make up the sole separate class of our population. We have no established nobility. Wealth confers no privilege which men are bound to observe. The respect paid to men who attain eminence in science and learning goes only as far as they are known. The titles of the professions are matters of courtesy and customs only. Our judges and legislators, our governors and mayors, are still our "fellow citizens," and the dignity they enjoy is but an honorary one. The highest office within our gift offers no exception. At the close of his term, even an ex-President, "that melancholy product of our system," must resume his place among his fellow citizens, to sink, not infrequently, into obscurity. But fifty thousand soldiers must stand attention to the merest second lieutenant! His rank is a fact. The life tenure, the necessities of military discipline and administration, weld army officers into a distinct class and make our military system the sole but necessary relic of personal government. Any class with special privileges is necessarily conservative.

The intimate association of "officer" and "gentleman," a legacy of feudal days, is not without significance. An o fficer must also be a gentleman, and "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" is erected into an offence punishable by dismissal from the service. The word "gentleman" has got far away from the strict significance of its French parent. De Tocqueville has made us see the process of this development. Passing over to England, with the changing conditions, "gentleman" was used to describe persons lower and lower in the social scale, until, when it crossed to this country, its significance became lost in an indiscriminate application to all citizens[27]. A flavor of its caste significance still remains in the traditional "high sense of honor" characteristic of our military service. It was a distant step for a slave and freedman to become an officer and gentleman.

While the above reflections may be some explanations in fact for the opposition to the commissioning of Negroes, there was no one with hardihood enough to bring them forward. Such notions might form the groundwork of a prejudice, but they could not become the reason of a policy. It is an instinctive tribute to the good sense of the American people that the opponents of colored officers were compelled to find reasons of another kind for their antagonism.

The one formula heard always in the campaign against colored officers was: Negroes cannot command. This formula was sent forth with every kind of variation, from the fierce fulminations of the hostile Southern press, to the more apologetic and philosophical discussions of our Northern secular and religious journals. To be sure, every now and then, there were exhibitions of impatience against the doctrine. Not a few newspapers had little tolerance for the nonsense. Some former commanders of Negro soldiers in the C ivil War, notably, General T.J. Morgan, spoke out in their behalf. The brilliant career of the black regulars in Cuba broke the spell for a time, but the re-action speedily set in. In short it became fastened pretty completely in the popular mind as a bit of demonstrated truth that Negroes could not make officers; that colored soldiers would neither follow nor obey officers of their own race.

This formula had of course to ignore an entire epoch of history. It could take no account of that lurid program wrought in the Antilles a century ago—a rising mob of rebel slaves, transformed into an invincible army of tumultuous blacks, under the guidance of the immortal Toussaint, overcoming the trained armies of three Continental powers, Spain, England and France, and audaciously projecting a black republic into the family of nations, a program at once a marvel and a terror to the civilized world.

Not alone in Hayti, but throughout the States of Central and South America have Negroes exercised military command, both in the struggles of these states for independence, and in their national armies established after independence. At least one soldier of Negro blood, General Dumas, father of the great novelist, arose to the rank of General of Division in the French Army and served under Napoleon. In our day we have seen General Dodds, another soldier of Negro blood, returning from a successful campaign in Africa, acclaimed throughout France, his immense popularity threatening Paris with a renewal of the hysterical days of Boulanger. Finally, we need not be told that at the very head and front of the Cuban Rebellion were Negroes of every hue, exercising every kind of command up to the very highest. We need but recall the lamented Maceo, the Negro chieftain, whose t ragic end brought sorrow and dismay to all of Cuba. With an army thronging with blacks and mulattoes, these Cuban chieftains, black, mulatto and white, prolonged such an harassing warfare as to compel the intervention of the United States. At the end of this recital, which could well have been extended with greater particularity, if it were thought needful, we are bound to conclude that the arbitrary formula relied upon by the opponents of colored officers was never constructed to fit such an obstinate set of facts.

The prolonged struggle which culminated in permitting the Negro's general enlistment in our Civil War had only to be repeated to secure for him the full pay of a soldier, the right to be treated as a prisoner of war, and to relieve him of the monopoly of fatigue and garrison duty. He was too overjoyed with the boon of fighting for the liberation of his race to make much contention about who was to lead him. With meagre exception, his exclusive business in that war was to carry a gun. Yet repeatedly Negro soldiers evinced high capacity for command. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson draws a glowing portrait of Sergeant Prince Rivers, Color-Sergeant of the First South Carolina Volunteers, a regiment of slaves, organized late in 1862. The Color-Sergeant was provost-Sergeant also, and had entire charge of the prisoners and of the daily policing of the camp.

"He is a man of distinguished appearance and in old times was the crack coachman of Beaufort. * * * They tell me that he was once allowed to present a petition to the Governor of South Carolina in behalf of slaves, for the redress of certain grievances, and that a placard, offering two thousand dollars for his re-capture is still to be seen by the wayside between here and Charleston. He was a sergean t in the old 'Hunter Regiment,' and was taken by General Hunter to New York last spring, where the chevrons on his arm brought a mob upon him in Broadway, whom he kept off till the police interfered. There is not a white officer in this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute authority over the men; they do not love him, but his mere presence has controlling power over them. He writes well enough to prepare for me a daily report of his duties in the camp; if his education reached a higher point I see no reason why he should not command the Army of the Potomac. He is jet-black, or rather, I should say, wine-black, his complexion, like that of others of my darkest men, having a sort of rich, clear depth, without a trace of sootiness, and to my eye very handsome. His features are tolerably regular, and full of command, and his figure superior to that of any of our white officers, being six feet high, perfectly proportioned, and of apparently inexhaustable strength and activity. His gait is like a panther's; I never saw such a tread. No anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability. He makes Toussaint perfectly intelligible, and if there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina he will be its king."[28]

Excepting the Louisiana Native Guards, the First South Carolina Volunteers was the first regiment of colored troops to be mustered into the service in the Civil War. The regiment was made up entirely of slaves, with scarcely a mulatto among them. The first day of freedom for these men was passed in uniform and with a gun. Among these Negroes, just wrested from slavery, their scholarly commander, Colonel Higginson, could find many whom he judged well fitted by nature to command.