Читать книгу Colored girls and boys' inspiring United States history and a heart to heart talk about white folks - William Henry Harrison - Страница 11

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On American pages of history space,

The world gives Lincoln the highest place,

For the triple service his life did give

So all men in freedom here could live.

When he signed his immortal name that day,

It meant that together the States must stay;

It lead the slaves to their freedom goals;

It washed one sin from the Rebels’ souls.

—Harrison

IF Colored men and women in the previous wars could become such wonderful fighters and loyal Americans with no knowledge and little hope of ever receiving freedom from their unnumbered slave sufferings and sacrifices; then, how much braver and more patriotic would they be when fighting with a new hope and full knowledge that their future freedom depended upon the success of the side on which they were fighting? It is needless to say that out of the more than one hundred forty thousand Colored people who took active parts in the Civil War, there were countless numbers of gallant and self-sacrificing deeds performed by them that were only seen and noted by God. And those acts of valor and heroism that were witnessed and recorded here on earth by mankind are so numerous that space herein will not allow but the mention of a very few.

Captain Andre Cailloux was one of the bravest soldiers to fall in the Union charge on Fort Hudson. It is said that his Company charged that fort six times looking point-blank into the red-flaming, fire-spitting, bullet-biting and smoke-breathing mouths of the enemy’s cannons, with a heavy loss among his men in each charge. Feeling sure he was going to his certain death, yet never flynching, a Colored soldier, Anselmas Plancianocis, who was a color sergeant, uttered the following words to his commander before departing to his post of duty within gun range and full view to the enemy; “Colonel, I will bring back these colors in honor, or report to God the reason why.” He never brought back the colors. At another time during the noted battle at Fort Wagner, it was William Carney who upon seeing the colors about to trail on the ground as they slipped from the relaxing grasp of a dying comrade, quickly leaped to his side grabbed the flag staff and planted it on the breastworks. When he in turn was severely wounded and carried to the rear, he had just strength and breath enough to whisper, “Boys, the Old flag never touched the ground.” Both artists and poets have often come forth to paint and sing of the fierce fighting and brave stand made by that famous 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment and its fearless and beloved white commander, Col. Robert Gould Shaw. He fell in the thickest of the battle surrounded by hundreds of his wounded and dying Colored troops whom he had watched over as a loving father and always led as a fighting officer. Although Col. Shaw and his men were greatly outnumbered by the enemy who repulsed their attack at Fort Wagner, the Colored soldiers, who had marched continually a day and a night without stopping and then pitched right into fighting without rest or food, proved to both the North and South that they were among the bravest of brave soldiers.

Civil War veterans now living, and when meeting each other usually become so excited when tongue fighting their battles over again that they forget for the time being all about their rheumatics and, throw away their canes as they hop about trying to imitate their former military actions in battles. Those who were there take delight in telling how Gen. Fitzhugh Lee and his prancing Old Dominion well trained white soldiers met their “Waterloo” in Fort Powhatan at the hands of the belittled and untrained slave troops. It was at Fort Harrison in Virginia that the Southerners on seeing Negro troops charging on the fort, taunted them with, “Come on darkies, we want your muskets.” Eye witnesses say that the so-called “darkies” being so used to obeying orders really did take the guns to the fort, but several hours afterwards when the smoke had cleared away it was seen that those Rebels who had remained to accept the muskets had received the bayonet ends through their bodies instead of the trigger ends into their hands. Gen. B. F. Butler’s records show that his ten regiments of ex-slave soldiers brought victory and fame all along their fighting lines.

Aside from the chief motive to help free themselves, without doubt one of the main things that spurred the Negro men to fight so valiantly was their constant memory of Fort Pillow. At that fort were stationed 292 Northern white soldiers and 262 Colored troops, all under the command of Major L. F. Booth. On the twelfth of April 1864 that place was surrounded by a much larger Confederate force under Generals Chalmers and Forest and ordered to surrender. Upon the fort refusing to do so, the Rebels closed in with their usual battle cry, “No Quarter”. And then as they broke in the fort and overpowered the handful of Union men, there began a scene of unmentioned butchering and slaughtering of Northern white soldiers and Colored ex-slave men, women and children that far surpassed in horribleness the massacre of Custer and his faithful little band by the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull and his merciless Indian warriors. So after that whenever Colored men entered battles their answer to the Rebel’s “No Quarter” was a challenge “Remember Fort Pillow,” and times too numerous to mention did Negro soldiers fully avenge that awful massacre of their comrades on that April day in Fort Pillow.

By reading the battlefield records of Gen. Thomas at Miliken’s Bend; Gen. Morgan at Nashville; Gen. Blount at Henry Springs; Gen. Smith at Petersburg; Generals S. C. Armstrong, B. F. Butler and O. O. Howard at other vital places, as well as the fighting records made in Virginia at Wilson Wharf, Deep Bottom, Fair Oaks, Hatchers Run and Farmville; full proofs can be found regarding the Colored soldiers’ supreme brave fights made for a twofold purpose—the saving of the Union and the freedom of themselves.

In summing up this part of this very important topic, the writer can think of no better way of strengthening the truth of foregoing assertions relative to Negro battlefield valour and loyalty in the Civil War than by quoting the following: “When the battle test came these regiments justified the hopes entertained by their sanguine friends.” This just and high tribute was paid to Colored Civil War fighters by Comrade John McElroy, a white editor of Washington, D.C., in the editorial correspondence of his National Tribune published April 7, 1921. He had written about General Rufus Saxton of Massachusetts taking military command of St. Helena Island, S. C. and forming the thousands of idle Negro men into regiments during the early stages of the Civil War.