ative of his race then at
the academy. Being again, for the third time, in danger of dismissal,
that colored cadet, either by his own hands, or by others with his
consent (of which he was finally convicted by a general court-
martial), was bound hand and foot and mutilated in such manner as,
while doing him no material injury, to create a suspicion of foul
play on the part of other cadets. An official investigation by
the commandant, Colonel Henry M. Lazelle, led him to the conclusion
that the other cadets had no knowledge whatever of the outrage,
and that the colored cadet himself was guilty. Not being fully
satisfied with that conclusion, I appointed a court of inquiry to
investigate the matter more thoroughly. The result of that
investigation fully sustained the finding of Colonel Lazelle, that
the colored cadet himself was the guilty person.

But those judicial conclusions did not suffice to allay the public
clamor for protection to the recently emancipated negroes in the
enjoyment of the privileges in the national institutions for which
they had not become either mentally or morally fitted. A presidential
election was pending, and the colored vote and that in sympathy
with it demanded assurance of the hearty and effective support of
the national administration. Nothing less than a radical change
at West Point would satisfy that demand, and who could be a more
appropriate victim to offer as a sacrifice to that Moloch than one
who had already gone beyond the limits of duty, of justice, and of
wisdom in his kind treatment of the colored cadet. It was decided
in Washington that he, the over-kind superintendent himself, should
be sacrificed to that partizan clamor before the coming election.
Some rumor of this purpose had reached me, though it had been
concealed from General Sherman, who assured me that no such purpose
existed.

GENERAL TERRY'S FRIENDLY ATTITUDE

In General Sherman's absence, General Alfred H. Terry was chosen
to succeed me. He came to West Point, August 14, for the purpose
of learning from me in person the truth as to the assertion made
to him that the proposition to relieve me from duty at West Point
was in accord with my own wishes. When informed, as he had suspected,
that I could not possibly have expressed any such wish under the
circumstances then existing, he positively refused, like the
honorable man that he was, to be made a party to any su