"The question of the color line has assumed an acute stage, and has called forth a good deal of feeling. The various Negro papers in the country are very generally insisting that if the Negro soldiers are to be enlisted, Negro officers should be appointed to command them. One zealous paper is clamoring for the appointment, immediately, by the President, of a Negro Major-General. The readers of _The Independent_ know very well that during the civil war there were enlisted in the United States army 200,000 Negro soldiers under white officers, the highest position assigned to a black man being that of first sergeant, or of regimental sergeant-major. The Negroes were allowed to wear chevrons, but not shoulder straps or epaulets. Although four Negro regiments have been incorporated in the regular army, and have rendered exceptionally effective service on the plains and elsewhere for a whole generation, there are to-day no Negro officers in the service. A number of young men have been appointed as cadets at West Point, but the life has not been by any means an easy one. The only caste or class with caste distinctions that exists in the republic is found in the army; army officers are, par excellence, the aristocrats; nowhere is class feeling so much cultivated as among them; nowhere is it so difficult to break down the established lines. Singularly enough, though entrance to West Point is made very broad, and a large number of those who go there to be educated at the expense of the Government have no social position to begin with, and no claims to special merit, and yet, after having been educated at the public expense, and appointed to life positions, they seem to cherish the feeling that they are a select few, entitled to special consideration, and that they are called upon to guard their class against any insidious invasions. Of course there are honorable exceptions. There are many who have been educated at West Point who are broad in their sympathies, democratic in their ideas, and responsive to every appeal of philanthropy and humanity; but the spirit of West Point has been opposed to the admission of Negroes into the ranks of commissioned officers, and the opposition to the commissioning of black men emanating from the army will go very far toward the defeat of any project of that kind."