The mustering out of the volunteers about the time this opposition was approaching what appeared to be a climax, causing the removal from the service of the colored officers, appeased the wrath of the demon, and the waves of the storm gradually sank to a peace, gratifying, indeed, to those who shuddered to see a black man with shoulder-straps. As the last Negro officer descended from the platform and honorably laid aside his sword to take his place as a citizen of the Republic, or a private in her armies, that class of our citizenship breathed a sigh of relief. What mattered it to them whether justice were done; whether the army were weakened; whether individuals were wronged; they were relieved from seeing Negroes in officers' uniforms, and that to them is a most gracious portion. The discharge of the volunteers was to them the triumph of their prejudices, and in it they took great comfort, although as a matter of fact it was a plain national movement coming about as a logical sequence, entirely independent of their whims or wishes. The injustice to the Negro officer does not lie in his being mustered out of the volunteer service, but in the failure to provide for a recognition of his valor in the nation's permanent military establishment. The departure of the colored man from the volunteer service was the consequent disappearance of the colored military officer, with the single exception of Lieutenant Charles Young of the Regular Cavalry, had a very depressing effect upon the colored people at large, and called forth from their press and their associations most earnest protests. With a few exceptions, these protests were encouched in respectful language toward the President and his advisers, but the grounds upon which they were based were so fair and just, that right-thinking men could not avoid their force. The following resolution, passed by the National Afro-American Council, may be taken as representative of the best form of such remonstrance: "_Resolved_, That we are heartily grieved that the President of the United States and those in authority have not from time to time used their high station to voice the best conscience of the nation in regard to mob violence and fair treatment of justly deserving men. It is not right that American citizens should be despoiled of life and liberty while the nation looks silently on; or that soldiers who, with conspicuous bravery, offer their lives for the country, should have their promotion result in practical dismissal from the army."