Part 3 (1/2)
Aye! speechless are those swarthy sons, Save for the clamor of the guns-- Their only battle-cry!
The lowly stain upon each face, The taunt still fresh of prouder race, But speeds the step that springs a pace, To succor or to die!
With rifles hot--to waist-band nude; The brawn beside the pampered dude; The cowboy king--one grave--and rude-- To shelter him who falls!
One breast--and bare,--howe'er begot, The low, the high--one common lot: The world's distinction all forgot When Freedom's bugle calls!
No faltering step, no fitful start; None seeking less than all his part; One watchward springing from each heart,-- Yet on, and onward still!
The sullen sound of tramp and tread; Abe Lincoln's flag still overhead; They followed where the angels led The way, up San Juan Hill!
And where the life stream ebbs and flows, And stains the track of trenchant blows That met no meaner steel, The bated breath--the battle yell-- The turf in slippery crimson, tell Where Castile's proudest colors fell With wounds that never heal!
Where every trooper found a wreath Of glory for his sabre sheath; And earned the laurels well; With feet to field and face to foe, In lines of battle lying low, The sable soldiers fell!
And where the black and brawny breast Gave up its all--life's richest, best, To find the tomb's eternal rest A dream of freedom still!
A groundless creed was swept away, With brand of ”coward ”--a time-worn say-- And he blazed the path a better way Up the side of San Juan Hill!
For black or white, on the scroll of fame, The blood of the hero dyes the same; And ever, ever will!
Sleep, trooper, sleep; thy sable brow, Amid the living laurel now, Is wound in wreaths of fame!
Nor need the graven granite stone, To tell of garlands all thine own-- To hold a soldier's name!
[In the city of New Orleans, in 1866, two thousand two hundred and sixty-six ex-slaves were recruited for the service. None but the largest and blackest Negroes were accepted. From these were formed the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry, and the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry. All four are famous fighting regiments, yet the two cavalry commands have earned the proudest distinction. While the record of the Ninth Cavalry, better known as the ”n.i.g.g.e.r Ninth,” in its thirty-two years of service in the Indian wars, in the military history of the border, stands without a peer; and is, without exception, the most famous fighting regiment in the United States service.]--Author.
[Ill.u.s.tration: COLONEL THEODORE B. ROOSEVELT.]
CHAPTER IV.
COLONEL THEODORE B. ROOSEVELT, NOW GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK, WHO LED THE ROUGH RIDERS, TELLS OF THE BRAVERY OF NEGRO SOLDIERS.
When Colonel Theodore Roosevelt returned from the command of the famous Rough Riders, he delivered a farewell address to his men, in which he made the following kind reference to the gallant Negro soldiers:
”Now, I want to say just a word more to some of the men I see standing around not of your number. I refer to the colored regiments, who occupied the right and left flanks of us at Guasimas, the Ninth and Tenth cavalry regiments. The Spaniards called them 'Smoked Yankees,'
but we found them to be an excellent breed of Yankees. I am sure that I speak the sentiments of officers and men in the a.s.semblage when I say that between you and the other cavalry regiments there exists a tie which we trust will never be broken.”--_Colored American_.
The foregoing compliments to the Negro soldiers by Colonel Roosevelt started up an avalanche of additional praise for them, out of which the fact came, that but for the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry (colored) coming up at Las Guasimas, destroying the Spanish block house and driving the Spaniards off, when Roosevelt and his men had been caught in a trap, with a barbed-wire fence on one side and a precipice on the other, not only the brave Cap.r.o.n and Fish, but the whole of his command would have been annihilated by the Spanish sharp-shooters, who were firing with smokeless powder under cover, and picking off the Rough Riders one by one, who could not see the Spaniards. To break the force of this unfavorable comment on the Rough Riders, it is claimed that Colonel Roosevelt made the following criticism of the colored soldiers in general and of a few of them in particular, in an article written by him for the April Scribner; and a letter replying to the Colonel's strictures, follows by Sergeant Holliday, who was an ”eye-witness” to the incident:
Colonel Roosevelt's criticism was, in substance, that colored soldiers were of no avail without white officers; that when the white commissioned officers are killed or disabled, colored non-commissioned officers could not be depended upon to keep up a charge already begun; that about a score of colored infantrymen, who had drifted into his command, weakened on the hill at San Juan under the galling Spanish fire, and started to the rear, stating that they intended finding their regiments, or to a.s.sist the wounded; whereupon he drew his revolver and ordered them to return to ranks and there remain, and that he would shoot the first man who didn't obey him; and that after that he had no further trouble.
Colonel Roosevelt is sufficiently answered in the following letter of Sergeant Holliday, and the point especially made by many eye-witnesses (white) who were engaged in that fight is, as related in Chapter V, of this book, that the Negro troops made the charges both at San Juan and El Caney after nearly all their officers had been killed or wounded.
Upon what facts, therefore, does Colonel Roosevelt base his conclusions that Negro soldiers will not fight without commissioned officers, when the only real test of this question happened around Santiago and showed just the contrary of what he states? We prefer to take the results at El Caney and San Juan as against Colonel Roosevelt's imagination.
COLONEL ROOSEVELT'S ERROR.
TRUE STORY OF THE INCIDENT HE MAGNIFIED TO OUR HURT--THE WHITE OFFICERS' HUMBUG SKINNED OF ITS HIDE BY SERGEANT HOLLIDAY--UNWRITTEN HISTORY.