officers than are
their white comrades. There was a striking instance of this two or three
years ago when a newly appointed and wholly untrained white officer lost
his head at a post in Texas. His black subordinates, largely recruits,
followed suit, and in carrying out his hysterical orders imperiled
many lives in the neighboring town. Selections for service with colored
troops should therefore be most carefully made. Major Bullard declares
that the officer of negro troops "must not only be an officer and
a gentleman, but he must be considerate, patient, laborious,
self-sacrificing, a man of affairs, and he must have knowledge and
wisdom in a great lot of things not really military."

If the position of a white officer is a difficult one, that of
the colored officer is still more so. He has not the self-assumed
superiority of the white man, naturally feels that he is on trial, and
must worry himself incessantly about his relations to his white comrades
of the shoulder straps. While the United States Navy has hitherto been
closed to negroes who aspire to be officers, the army has pursued a
wiser and more just policy. The contrast between the two services is
really remarkable. On almost every war vessel white and black sailors
sleep and live together in crowded quarters without protest or friction.
But the negro naval officer is kept out of the service by hook or by
crook for the avowed reason that the cramped quarters of the wardroom
would make association with him intolerable. In the army, on the other
hand, the experiment of mixed regiments has never been tried. A good
colored soldier can nevertheless obtain a commission by going through
West Point, or by rising from the ranks, or by being appointed directly
from civil life.

Since the foundation of the Military Academy there have been eighteen
colored boys appointed to West Point, of whom fifteen failed in their
preliminary examinations, or were discharged after entering because of
deficiency in studies. Three were graduated and commissioned as second
lieutenants of cavalry, Henry Ossian Flipper, John Hanks Alexander, and
Charles Young. Of these, Lieutenant Flipper was dismissed June 30,
1882, for "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman." The other
two proved themselves excellent officers, notably Young, who is at this
writing a captain, and a most efficient one, in the Ninth Cavalry, with
which he recently served in the Philippines. Lieutenant Alexander died