The outbreak of the Spanish War brought the question of colored officers prominently to the front.  The colored people began at once to demand that officers of their own race be commissioned to command colored volunteers.  They were not to be deluded by any extravagant praise of their past heroic services, which veiled a determination to ignore their just claims.  So firmly did they adhere to their demands that but one volunteer regiment of colored troops, the Third Alabama, could be induced to enter the service with none of its officers colored.  But the concessions obtained were always at the expense of continuous and persistent effort, and in the teeth of a very active and at times extremely violent opposition.  We know already the kind of opposition the Eighth Illinois, the Twenty-third Kansas, and the Third North Carolina Regiments, officered entirely by colored men, encountered.  It was this opposition, as we have seen, which confined colored officers to positions below the grade of captain in the four immune regiments.  From a like cause, we know also, distinguished non-commissioned officers of the four regular regiments of colored troops were allowed promotion only to Lieutenantcies in the immune regiments, and upon the muster out of those organizations, were compelled, if they desired to continue soldiering, to resume their places as enlisted men.

There is some explanation for this opposition in the nature of the distinction which military rank confers.  Military rank and naval rank constitute the only real distinction among us.  Our officers of the army and navy, and of the army more than of the navy, because the former officers are more constantly within the country, make up the sole separate class of our population.  We have no established nobility.  Wealth confers no privilege which men are bound to observe.  The respect paid to men who attain eminence in science and learning goes only as far as they are known.  The titles of the professions are matters of courtesy and customs only.  Our judges and legislators, our governors and mayors, are still our “fellow citizens,” and the dignity they enjoy is but an honorary one.  The highest office within our gift offers no exception.  At the close of his term, even an ex-President, “that melancholy product of our system,” must resume his place among his fellow citizens, to sink, not infrequently, into obscurity.  But fifty thousand soldiers must stand attention to the merest second lieutenant!  His rank is a fact.  The life tenure, the necessities of military discipline and administration, weld army officers into a distinct class and make our military system the sole but necessary relic of personal government.  Any class with special privileges is necessarily conservative.