government, we must also class
Toussaint L'Ouverteur, the black soldier of the Antilles. Thiers, the
prejudiced attorney of Napoleon, declares nevertheless that Toussaint
possessed wonderful talent for government, and the fact ever remains
that under his benign rule all classes were pacified and San Domingo
was made to blossom as the rose. In the armies of Menelek, in the
armies of France, in the armies of England, as well as in the
organization of the Zulu and Kaffir tribes the Negro has shown himself
a soldier. If the Afro-American should fail in this particular it will
not be because of any lack of the military element in the African side
of his character, or for any lack of "remorseless military audacity"
in the original Negro, as the historian, Williams, expresses it.

In our own Revolutionary War, the Negro, then but partially civilized,
and classed with "vagabonds," held everywhere as a slave, and
everywhere distrusted, against protest and enactment, made his way
into the patriot army, fighting side by side with his white
compatriots from Lexington to Yorktown. On the morning of April 19th,
1775, when the British re-enforcements were preparing to leave Boston
for Lexington, a Negro soldier who had served in the French war,
commanded a small body of West Cambridge "exempts" and captured Lord
Percy's supply train with its military escort and the officer in
command. As a rule the Negro soldiers were distributed among the
regiments, thirty or forty to a regiment, and did not serve in
separate organizations. Bishop J.P. Campbell, of the African Methodist
Church, was accustomed to say "both of my grandfathers served in the
Revolutionary War." In Varnum's Brigade, however, there was a Negro
regiment and of it Scribner's history, 1897, says, speaking of the
battle of Rhode Island: "None behaved better than Greene's colored
regiment, which three times repulsed the furious charges of veteran
Hessians." Williams says: "The black regiment was one of three that
prevented the enemy from turning the flank of the American army. These
black troops were doubtless regarded as the weak spot of the line, but
they were not."

The colony of Massachusetts alone furnished 67,907 men for the
Revolutionary War, while all the colonies together south of
Pennsylvania furnished but 50,493, hence the sentiment prevailing in
Massachusetts would naturally be very powerful in determining any
question pertaining to the army. When the country spra