nd conservative
spirit of history into eulogy! They have overcome the obstacles in the
path of the physical civilization of North America; they have earned
billions of dollars for a profligate people; they have made good
laborers, efficient sailors, and peerless soldiers. In three wars they
won the crown of heroes by steady, intrepid valor; and in peace have
shown themselves the friends of stable government. During the war for
the Union, 186,017[140] Colored men enlisted in the service of the
nation, _and participated in 249 battles_. From 1866 to 1873, besides
the money saved in other banking houses, they deposited in the
Freedmen's Banks at the South $53,000,000! From 1866 to 1875 there
were seven Negroes as Lieutenant-Governors of Southern States; two
served in the United States Senate, and thirteen in the United States
House of Representatives. There have been five Negroes appointed as
Foreign Ministers. There have been ten Negro members of Northern
legislatures; and in the Government Departments at Washington there
are 620 Negroes employed. Starting without schools this remarkable
people have now 14,889 schools, with an attendance of 720,853 pupils!
And this does not include the children of color who attend the white
schools of the Northern States; and as far as it is possible to get
the statistics, there are at present 169 Colored students attending
white colleges in the Northern States.

The first blood shed in the Revolution was that of a Negro, Crispus
Attucks, on the 5th of March, 1770. The first blood shed in the war
for the Union was that of a Negro, Nicholas Biddle, a member of the
very first company that passed through Baltimore in April, 1861; while
the first Negro killed in the war was named _John Brown!_ The first
Union regiment of Negro troops raised during the Rebellion, was raised
in the State that was first to secede from the Union, South Carolina.
Its colonel was a Massachusetts man, and a graduate of Harvard
College. The first action in which Negro troops participated was in
South Carolina. The first regiment of Northern Negro troops fought its
first battle in South Carolina, at Fort Wagner, where it immortalized
itself. The first Negro troops recruited in the Mississippi Valley
were recruited by a Massachusetts officer, Gen. B. F. Butler; while
their first fighting here was directed by another Massachusetts
officer, Gen. N. P. Banks. The first recognition of Negro troops by
the Confederate army