o humble duty, one of the highest marks of the
Christ-life. He is humble and faithful, but not from cowardice, in
evidence of which I recall his achievements at Boston, Bunker Hill, New
Orleans, Milikens Bend, Wilson's Landing, and San Juan Hill.

He fought when a slave, some would say, from compulsion, but would he
fight for love of the flag of the Union? God gave him a chance to answer
the question at San Juan Hill. The story is best understood as told to
me by one of the brave 9th Cavalry as he lay wounded at Old Point
Comfort, Va.

* * * * *

Up go the splendid Rough Riders amid shot and shell from enemies
concealed in fields, trees, ditches, and the block-house on the hill.
The galling fire proves too much for them and back they come. A second
and third assault proves equally unavailing. They must have help. Help
arrives, in the form of a colored regiment. See them as they come, black
as the sable plume of midnight, yet irresistible as the terrible
cyclone. As is the custom of my race under excitement of any kind, they
are singing, not

"My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of Liberty,
Of thee I sing,"

though fighting willingly for the land that gave them birth; not, "The
Bonnie blue flag," though they were willing to die for the flag they
loved; they sing a song never heard on battle-field before, "There's a
hot time in the old town to-night." On they come, trampling on the dead
bodies of their comrades; they climb the hill. "To the rear!" is the
command. "To the front!" they cry; and leaderless, with officers far in
the rear, they plant the flag on San Juan Hill, and prove to the world
that Negroes can fight for love of country.

They were faithful to humble duty in the dark days of the South from
1861 to 1865. When Jefferson Davis had called for troops until he had
well-nigh decimated the fair Southland, and even boys, in their devotion
to the cause they loved dearly, were willing to go to the front, my
young master came to my old mistress and asked to be allowed to go.
Calling my Uncle Isaac, my old mistress said to him, "Isaac, go along
with your young Mars Edmund, take good care of him, and bring him home
to me." "I gwy do de bes I kin," was his reply. Off these two went, amid
the tears of the whole plantation, and we heard no more of them for some
time. One night we were startled to hear the dogs howling down in the
pasture-lot, always to the Southern heart a forewarning of death. A few