orey seriously wounded, with a few of his
survivors, finally escaped from the house and hid for nearly two days in
a hole. The soldiers refused to leave their officer. When they finally
were able to leave their place of concealment, the several that were
left assisted their Captain on the road towards the main force. Arriving
at a point where reinforcements could be summoned, the Captain wrote a
report to his commander and sent his men to headquarters with it. They
arrived in record time and a party was sent out, reaching the wounded
officer in time to save his life.

About half of the American force was wiped out and most of the others
were taken prisoners. They inflicted a much heavier loss on the
Mexicans. Among the killed was the Mexican commander who had ordered the
treacherous attack.

It may be that "someone had blundered." This was not the concern of the
black troopers; in the face of odds they fought by the cactus and lay
dead under the Mexican stars.

In closing this outline of the Negro's participation in former wars, it
is highly appropriate to quote the tributes of two eminent men. One,
General Benjamin F. Butler, a conspicuous military leader on the Union
side in the Civil War, and Wendell Phillips, considered by many the
greatest orator America ever produced, and who devoted his life to the
abolition movement looking to the freedom of the slave in the United
States. Said General Butler on the occasion of the debate in the
National House of Representatives on the Civil Rights bill; ten years
after the bloody battle of New Market Heights; speaking to the bill, and
referring to the gallantry of the black soldiers on that field of
strife:

"It became my painful duty to follow in the track of that charging
column, and there, in a space not wider than the clerk's desk and
three hundred yards long, lay the dead bodies of 543 of my colored
comrades, fallen in defense of their country, who had offered their
lives to uphold its flag and its honor, as a willing sacrifice; and
as I rode along among them, guiding my horse this way and that way,
lest he should profane with his hoofs what seemed to me the sacred
dead, and as I looked on their bronzed faces upturned in the
shining sun, as if in mute appeal against the wrongs of the country
whose flag had only been to them a flag of stripes, on which no
star of glory had ever shone for them--feeling I had wronged