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History of the American Negro in the Great World War: His Splendid Record in the Battle Zones of Europe; Including a Resume of His Past Services to his Country in the Wars of the Revolution, of 1812, the War of Rebellion, the Indian Wars on the Frontier, the Spanish-American War, and the Late Imbroglio With MexicoSweeney, William Allison

History

History of the American Negro in the Great World War: His Splendid Record in the Battle Zones of Europe; Including a Resume of His Past Services to his Country in the Wars of the Revolution, of 1812, the War of Rebellion, the Indian Wars on the Frontier, the Spanish-American War, and the Late Imbroglio With Mexico

Name: History of the American Negro in the Great World War: His Splendid Record in the Battle Zones of Europe; Including a Resume of His Past Services to his Country in the Wars of the Revolution, of 1812, the War of Rebellion, the Indian Wars on the Frontier, the Spanish-American War, and the Late Imbroglio With Mexico
Author: Sweeney, William Allison

Sweeney, William Allison

African American soldiers; African Americans -- History -- 1877-1964; World War, 1914-1918 -- Participation, African American

"It became my painful duty to follow in the track of that charging
     column, and there, in a space not wider than the clerk's desk and
     three hundred yards long, lay the dead bodies of 543 of my colored
     comrades, fallen in defense of their country, who had offered their
     lives to uphold its flag and its honor, as a willing sacrifice; and
     as I rode along among them, guiding my horse this way and that way,
     lest he should profane with his hoofs what seemed to me the sacred
     dead, and as I looked on their bronzed faces upturned in the
     shining sun, as if in mute appeal against the wrongs of the country
     whose flag had only been to them a flag of stripes, on which no
     star of glory had ever shone for them--feeling I had wronged them
     in the past and believing what was the future of my country to
     them--among my dead comrades there I swore to myself a solemn oath,
     'May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the
     roof of my mouth, if I ever fail to defend the rights of those men
     who have given their blood for me and my country this day, and for
     their race forever,' and, God helping me, I will keep that oath."

Mr. Phillips in his great oration on Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Black of
St. Domingo; statesman, warrior and LIBEEATOR,--delivered in New York
City, March 11, 1863, said among other things, a constellation of
linguistic brilliants not surpassed since the impassioned appeals of
Cicero swept the Roman Senate to its feet, or Demosthenes fired his
listeners with the flame of his matchless eloquence;

     "You remember that Macaulay says, comparing Cromwell with Napoleon,
     that Cromwell showed the greater military genius, if we consider
     that he never saw an army till he was forty; while Napoleon was
     educated from a boy in the best military schools in Europe.
     Cromwell manufactured his own army; Napoleon at the age of
     twenty-seven was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever
     saw. They were both successful; but, says Macaulay, with such
     disadvantages, the Englishman showed the greater genius. Whether
     you allow the inference or not, you will at least grant that it is
     a fair mode of measurement.

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