emainder of the day.

The battalion was ordered to be mustered out January 29, 1899.
Lieutenant Geo. W. Van Deusen, First Artillery, who was detailed to
muster out the command, hardly spent fifteen minutes in the camp.
Major Young had been detailed Assistant Commissary of Musters and
signed all discharges for the Ninth Battalion, except for the field
and staff, which were signed by Lieutenant Van Deusen. The companies
left for their respective cities the same night they were paid. Major
Bullis was the paymaster.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] See "Outline History of the Ninth (Separate) Battalion Ohio
Volunteer Infantry," by the Battalion Adjutant, Lieutenant Nelson
Ballard, following the close of this chapter.

CHAPTER XII.

COLORED OFFICERS.

By Captain Frank R. Steward, A.B., LL.B., Harvard,
Forty-ninth U.S. Volunteer Infantry--Appendix.

Of all the avenues open to American citizenship the commissioned ranks
of the army and navy have been the stubbornest to yield to the newly
enfranchised. Colored men have filled almost every kind of public
office or trust save the Chief Magistracy. They have been members of
both Houses of Congress, and are employed in all the executive
branches of the Government, but no Negro has as yet succeeded in
invading the commissioned force of the navy, and his advance in the
army has been exceedingly slight. Since the war, as has been related,
but three Negroes have been graduated from the National Military
Academy at West Point; of these one was speedily crowded out of the
service; another reached the grade of First Lieutenant and died
untimely; the third, First Lieutenant Charles Young, late Major of the
9th Ohio Battalion, U.S. Volunteers, together with four colored
Chaplains, constitute the sole colored commissioned force of our
Regular Army.

Although Negroes fought in large numbers in both the Revolution and
the War of 1812, there is no instance of any Negro attaining or
exercising the rank of commissioned officer. It is a curious bit of
history, however, that in the Civil War those who were fighting to
keep colored men enslaved were the first to commission colored
officers. In Louisiana but a few days after the outbreak of the war,
the free colored population of New Orleans organized a military
organization, called the "Native Guard," which was accepted into the
service of the State and its officers were duly commissioned by the
Governor.[26]

These Negro soldiers