the jaws of death, many meeting horrible destruction actually at
the cannon's mouth.

It was a day prodigal with deeds of fanatical bravery. The colors of
the First Louisiana, torn and shivered in that fearful hail of fire,
were still borne forward in front of the works by the color-sergeant,
until a shell from the enemy cut the flag in two and gave the sergeant
his mortal wound. He fell spattering the flag with blood and brains
and hugged it to his bosom as he lay in the grasp of death. Two
corporals sprang forward to seize the colors, contending in generous
rivalry until a rebel sharpshooter felled one of them across the
sergeant's lifeless body. The other dashed proudly forward with the
flag. Sixteen men fell that day defending the colors.

Black officers and white officers commanded side by side, moving among
the men to prompt their valor by word and example, revealing no
difference in their equal contempt of death. Captain Quinn, of the
Third Regiment, with forty reckless followers, bearing their rifles
and cartridge boxes above their heads, swam the ditch and leaped among
the guns, when they were ordered back to escape a regiment of rebels
hastening for their rear. Six of them re-crossed alive, and of these
only two were unhurt, the brave Quinn and a Lieutenant. The gallant
Captain Andre Cailloux, who commanded the color company of the First
Louisiana, a man black as night, but a leader by birth and education,
moved in eager zeal among his men, cheering them on by words and his
own noble example, with his left arm already shattered, proudly
refusing to leave the field. In a last effort of heroism, he sprang to
the front of his company, commanded his men to follow him, and in the
face of that murderous fire, gallantly led them forward until a shell
smote him to death but fifty yards from the works.

Cailloux, a pure Negro in blood, was born a freeman and numbered
generations of freemen among his ancestry. He had fine presence, was a
man of culture and possessed wealth. He had raised his company by his
own efforts, and attached them to him, not only by his ardent pride of
race, which made him boast his blackness, but also by his undoubted
talents for command. His heroic death was mourned by thousands of his
race who had known him. His body, recovered after the surrender, was
given a soldier's burial in his own native city of New Orleans.

When the day was spent, the bleeding and shattered column was at
length re