But an ounce of fact in such things is worth more than many volumes of idle speculation, and it is remarkable that facts so recent, so numerous, and so near at hand, should escape the notice of those who question the Negro's ability to serve the artillery organizations. Negro artillery, both light and heavy, fought in fifteen battles in the Civil War with average effectiveness; and some of those who fought against them must either admit the value of the Negro artilleryman or acknowledge their own inefficiency. General Fitz-Hugh Lee failed to capture a Negro battery after making most vigorous attempts to that end. This attempt to raise a doubt as to the Negro's ability to serve in the artillery arm is akin to, and less excusable, than that other groundless assertion, that Negro officers cannot command troops, an assertion which in this country amounts to saying that the United States cannot command its army. Both of these assertions have been emphatically answered in fact, the former as shown above, and the latter as will be shown later in this volume. These assertions are only temporary covers, behind which discomfitted and retreating prejudice is able to make a brief stand, while the black hero of five hundred battle-fields, marches proudly by, disdaining to lower his gun to fire a shot on a foe so unworthy. When the Second Massachusetts Volunteers sent up their hearty cheers of welcome to the gallant old Twenty-fifth, as that solid column fresh from El Caney swung past its camp, I remarked to Sergeant Harris, of the Twenty-fifth: "Those men think you are soldiers." "They know we are soldiers," was his reply. When the people of this country, like the members of that Massachusetts regiment, come to know that its black men in uniform are soldiers, plain soldiers, with the same interests and feelings as other soldiers, of as much value to the government and entitled from it to the same attention and rewards, then a great step toward the solution of the prodigious problem now confronting us will have been taken. * * * * * Note.--"I had often heard that the physique of the men of our regular army was very remarkable, but the first time I saw any large body of them, which was at Tampa, they surpassed my highest expectations. It is not, however, to be wondered at that, for every recruit who is accepted, on the average thirty-four are rejected, and that, of course, the men who present themselves to the recruiting officer already represent a physical 'elite'; but it was very pleasant to see and be assured, as I was at Tampa, by the evidences of my own eyes and the tape measure, that there is not a guard regiment of either the Russian, German or English army, of whose remarkable physique we have heard so much, that can compare physically, not with the best of our men, but simply with the average of the men of our regular army."--Bonsal. FOOTNOTES: