Not alone in Hayti, but throughout the States of Central and South America have Negroes exercised military command, both in the struggles of these states for independence, and in their national armies established after independence.  At least one soldier of Negro blood, General Dumas, father of the great novelist, arose to the rank of General of Division in the French Army and served under Napoleon.  In our day we have seen General Dodds, another soldier of Negro blood, returning from a successful campaign in Africa, acclaimed throughout France, his immense popularity threatening Paris with a renewal of the hysterical days of Boulanger.  Finally, we need not be told that at the very head and front of the Cuban Rebellion were Negroes of every hue, exercising every kind of command up to the very highest.  We need but recall the lamented Maceo, the Negro chieftain, whose tragic end brought sorrow and dismay to all of Cuba.  With an army thronging with blacks and mulattoes, these Cuban chieftains, black, mulatto and white, prolonged such an harassing warfare as to compel the intervention of the United States.  At the end of this recital, which could well have been extended with greater particularity, if it were thought needful, we are bound to conclude that the arbitrary formula relied upon by the opponents of colored officers was never constructed to fit such an obstinate set of facts.

The prolonged struggle which culminated in permitting the Negro’s general enlistment in our Civil War had only to be repeated to secure for him the full pay of a soldier, the right to be treated as a prisoner of war, and to relieve him of the monopoly of fatigue and garrison duty.  He was too overjoyed with the boon of fighting for the liberation of his race to make much contention about who was to lead him.  With meagre exception, his exclusive business in that war was to carry a gun.  Yet repeatedly Negro soldiers evinced high capacity for command.  Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson draws a glowing portrait of Sergeant Prince Rivers, Color-Sergeant of the First South Carolina Volunteers, a regiment of slaves, organized late in 1862.  The Color-Sergeant was provost-Sergeant also, and had entire charge of the prisoners and of the daily policing of the camp.

“He is a man of distinguished appearance and in old times was the crack coachman of Beaufort. * * * They tell me that he was once allowed to present a petition to the Governor of South Carolina in behalf of slaves, for the redress of certain grievances, and that a placard, offering two thousand dollars for his re-capture is still to be seen by the wayside between here and Charleston.  He was a sergeant in the old ‘Hunter Regiment,’ and was taken by General Hunter to New York last spring, where the chevrons on his arm brought a mob upon him in Broadway, whom he kept off till the police interfered.  There is not a white officer in this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute authority