The Colored Regulars in the United States ArmySteward, T. G. (Theophilus Gould)
History
The Colored Regulars in the United States Army
Steward, T. G. (Theophilus Gould)
African American soldiers; Spanish-American War, 1898 -- Participation, African American
Mr. Buckle recognizes this, and accounts for the harmonious movements
of the nation by the influence of two leading principles, which he is
pleased to call superstition and loyalty. The Arab invasion had
pressed upon the Christians with such force that it was only by the
strictest discipline that the latter had managed to survive. To secure
such discipline, and at the same time supply the people with the
steady enthusiasm necessary to support a war from century to century,
all the terrors and all the glories that could be derived from
religion were employed. The church and the state, the prince and the
priest, became as one, and loyalty and religion, devotion to the
standard and to the cross, were but different names for the same
principles and actions. Hence Spain emerged to greatness without the
least dream of liberty of either person, conscience or thought. Her
rallying cry was: For the Prince and the Church; not, For God and
Liberty. She went up to greatness the most loyal and the most
religious of nations; but Liberty, Justice and Truth were not upon her
banners.
Look over the territory settled and conquered by her, and what do we
see? Columbus, sailing under Spain, names the first land he discovers
San Salvador; the first settlement made in this country is St.
Augustine; the second, Sante Fe. Look down over the southern half of
our continent and such names as Espirito Santo, Corpus Christi, San
Diego, San Juan, San Jose, San Domingo attest the religious zeal of
the conquerors. They were missionaries of the Cross, robbing the
people of their gold and paying them off with religion.
Steadfast in the faith and sturdy in her loyalty, Spain resisted all
innovations with respect to her religious beliefs, and all
insurrections against her government. Her Alva and her Torquemada but
illustrated how strong was her conservatism, while her Isabella and
her Philip II show how grand and comprehensive and how persistent was
her aggressiveness, under the idea of spreading and upholding the true
faith. She not only meant to hold all she had of wealth and power, but
she aspired to universal dominion; already chief, she desired to be
sole, and this in the interest and name of the Holy Church.
The Reformation did not disturb Spain; it was crushed out within
twenty years. The spirit of liberty that had been growing in England
since Bosworth's Field, and that was manifesting itself in Germany and
the Netherlands, and that had begun to quiver even in France, did not
dare stir itself in Spain. Spain was united, or rather, was solidity
itself, and this solidity was both its strength and its death. England
was not so united, and England went steadily onward and upward; but
Spain's unity destroyed her, because it practically destroyed
individualism and presented the strange paradox of a strong nation of
weak men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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