Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
History
Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
African American orators; African Americans -- History -- Sources; Speeches, addresses, etc., American -- African American authors
Shall we glance from this to Millikens Bend, La., in January, 1863,
garrisoned by the 9th and 11th Louisiana and the 1st Mississippi, all
Negroes, and about 160 of the 23rd Iowa (white), about 1100 fighting men
in all? Attacked by a force of six Confederate regiments, crushed out of
their works by sheer weight of numbers, borne down toward the levee,
fighting every step of the way, hand to hand--clubbed musket, bayonets,
and swords,--from three A. M. to twelve noon, they fought desperately
until a Union gun-boat came to the rescue and shelled the desperate foe
back to the woods, with a total loss to the defenders of 437
men,--two-fifths of their strength.
Shall we turn with sadness to Fort Wagner, S. C., in July, 1863, when
the 54th Massachusetts won its deathless fame, and its grand young
commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, passed into the temple of
immortality? After a march of all day, under a burning sun, and all
night through a tempest of wind and rain, drenched, exhausted, hungry,
they wheeled into line, without a murmur for that awful charge, that
dance of death, the struggle against hopeless odds, and the shattered
remnants were hurled back as from the mouth of hell, leaving the dead
bodies of their young commander and his noble followers to be buried in
a common grave. Its total loss was about one-third of its strength.
Here it was that the gallant flag-sergeant, Carney, though grievously
wounded, bore back his flag to safety, and fell fainting and exhausted
with loss of blood, saying, "Boys, the old flag never touched the
ground!" Or another glance, at ill-starred Olustee, where the gallant
8th United States Colored Troops lost 87 killed of its effective
fighting force, the largest loss in any one colored regiment in any one
action of the war. And so on, by Fort Pillow, which let us pass in
merciful silence, and to Honey Hill, S. C., perhaps the last desperate
fight in the far south, in which the 32nd, 35th, and 102nd United States
Colored Troops and the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry won fresh
and fadeless laurels for splendid fighting against hopeless odds and
insurmountable difficulties, and then to Nashville, Tenn., with its
recorded loss of 84 killed in the effectives of the 13th United States
Colored Troops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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