ity? After a march of all day, under a burning sun, and all
night through a tempest of wind and rain, drenched, exhausted, hungry,
they wheeled into line, without a murmur for that awful charge, that
dance of death, the struggle against hopeless odds, and the shattered
remnants were hurled back as from the mouth of hell, leaving the dead
bodies of their young commander and his noble followers to be buried in
a common grave. Its total loss was about one-third of its strength.

Here it was that the gallant flag-sergeant, Carney, though grievously
wounded, bore back his flag to safety, and fell fainting and exhausted
with loss of blood, saying, "Boys, the old flag never touched the
ground!" Or another glance, at ill-starred Olustee, where the gallant
8th United States Colored Troops lost 87 killed of its effective
fighting force, the largest loss in any one colored regiment in any one
action of the war. And so on, by Fort Pillow, which let us pass in
merciful silence, and to Honey Hill, S. C., perhaps the last desperate
fight in the far south, in which the 32nd, 35th, and 102nd United States
Colored Troops and the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry won fresh
and fadeless laurels for splendid fighting against hopeless odds and
insurmountable difficulties, and then to Nashville, Tenn., with its
recorded loss of 84 killed in the effectives of the 13th United States
Colored Troops.

These were all brilliant actions, and they covered the actors with, and
reflected upon the race, a blaze of glory. But it was in the armies of
the James and of the Potomac that the true metal of the Negro as a
soldier rang out its clearest notes amid the tremendous diapasons that
rolled back and forth between the embattled hosts. Here was war indeed,
upon its grandest scale and in all its infinite variety: The tireless
march under burning sun, chilling frosts, and driven tempests; the
lonely vigil of the picket under starless skies, the rush and roar of
countless "hosts to battle driven" in the mad charge and the victorious
shout that pursued the fleeing foe; the grim determination that held its
line of defenses with set teeth, blood-shot eye, and strained muscle,
beating back charge after charge of the foe; the patient labor in trench
and mine, on hill and in valley, swamp and jungle, with disease adding
its horrors to the decimation of shot and shell.

Here the Negro stood in the full glare of the greatest search-light,
part and parcel of the