umn which literally melted
away under the rain of shot and shell; the flags of the leading
regiments went down, but a brave black hand seized the colors. They were
soon up again and waved their starry light over the storm of battle.
Again the axemen fell, but strong hands and willing hearts seized the
heavy sharpened trees and dragged them away, and the column rushed
forward and with a shout that rang out above the roar of artillery went
over the redoubt like a flash, and the enemy did not stop running within
four miles, leaving the Phalanx in possession of their deemed
impregnable work, cannons and small arms. The autocrats of the regular
army could croak no longer about the negro soldiers not fighting.

"This gallantry of the Phalanx won for them and the negro race the
admiration of the man who supported Jeff Davis and the slave power in
the Charleston convention in 1860. Ten years after this splendid victory
of the Phalanx, in support of their civil rights, General Butler then a
member of congress, made an eloquent appeal in behalf of the equal civil
rights of the negro race. In it he referred to the gallant charge of the
Phalanx. He said: "It became my painful duty to follow in the track of
that charging column, and there, in a space not wider than the clerk's
desk and three hundred yards long, lay the dead bodies of five hundred
and forty-three of my colored comrades, fallen in defense of their
country, who had offered up their lives to uphold its flag and its
honor, as a willing sacrifice: and as I rode along among them, guiding
my horse this way and that way, lest he should profane with his hoofs
what seemed to me the sacred dead, and as I looked on their bronzed
faces upturned in the shining sun, as if in mute appeal against the
wrongs of the country for which they had given their lives, whose flag
had only been to them a flag of stripes, on which no star of glory had
ever shone for them--feeling I had wronged them in the past and
believing what was the future of my country to them--among my dead
comrades there, I swore to myself a solemn oath--'May my right hand
forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof my mouth, if I ever
fail to defend the rights of those men who have given their blood for me
and my country that day and for their race forever, and God helping me,
I will keep that oath."

* * * * *

"NEW MARKET HEIGHTS.[B]

"'Freedom their battle cry, freedom or