Mexican soldiers. Although outnumbered almost ten to one, these black soldiers dismounted in the face of a withering machine-gun fire, deployed, charged the Mexicans and killed their commander.
This handful of men fought on until, of the three officers commanding them, two were killed and one was badly wounded. Seventeen of the men were killed and twenty-three were made prisoners. One of the many outstanding heroes of this memorable engagement was Peter Bigstaff, who fought to the last beside his commander, Lieutenant Adair. A southern white man, with no love for blacks, wrote:
“The black trooper might have faltered and fled a dozen times, saving his own life and leaving Adair to fight alone. But it never seemed to occur to him. He was a comrade to the last blow. When Adair’s broken revolver fell from his hand the black trooper pressed another into it, and together, shouting in defiance, they thinned the swooping circle of overwhelming odds before them.
“The black man fought in the deadly shambles side by side with the white man, following always, fighting always as his lieutenant fought.
“And finally, when Adair, literally shot to pieces, fell in his tracks, his last command to his black trooper was to leave him and save his life. Even then the heroic Negro paused in the midst of that Hell of carnage for a final service to his officer. Bearing a charmed life, he had fought his way out. He saw that Adair had fallen with his head in the water. With superb loyalty the black trooper turned and went back to the maelstrom of death, lifted the head of his superior, leaned him against a tree and left him there dead with dignity when it was impossible to serve any more.
“There is not a finer piece of soldierly devotion and heroic comradeship in the history of modern warfare than that of Henry Adair and the black trooper who fought by him at Carrizal” [John Temple Graves].65
7. The World War
Finally we come to the World War, the history of which is not yet written. At first and until the United States entered the war, the Negro figured as a laborer and a great exodus took place from the South as we have already noted. Some effort was made to keep the Negro from the draft, but finally he was called—and although constituting less than a tenth of the population he furnished 13% of the soldiers called to the colors. The registry for the draft had insulting color discriminations and determined effort was made to confine Negroes to stevedore and labor regiments under white officers. Most of the Negro draftees were thus sent to the Service of Supplies, where they were largely under illiterate whites and suffered greatly. Finally a camp for training Negro officers was established and nearly 700 Negroes com missioned, none of them, however, above the rank of captain; Charles Young, the highest ranking Negro graduate of West Point and one of the best officers in the army was kept from the front, because being already a colonel with a distinguished record he would surely have become a general if sent to France.
Two Negro divisions were planned, the 92nd and the 93rd. The 93rd was to be composed of the Negro National Guard regiments all of whom had some and one all Negro officers. The latter division was never organized as a complete division, but four of its regiments were sent to France and encountered bitter discrimination from the Americans on account of their Negro officers. They were eventually brigaded with the French and saw some of the hardest fighting of the war in the final drive toward Sedan. They were cited in General Orders as follows by General Goybet:66
“In transmitting to you with legitimate pride the thanks and congratulations of the General Garnier Duplessis, allow me, my dear friends of all ranks, Americans and French, to thank you from the bottom of my heart as a chief and a soldier for the expression of gratitude for the glory which you have lent our good 157th Division. I had full confidence in you but you have surpassed my hopes.
“During these nine days of hard fighting you have progressed nine kilometers through powerful organized defenses, taken nearly 600 prisoners, 15 guns of different calibers, 20 minnewerfers, and nearly 150 machine guns, secured an enormous amount of engineering material, an important supply of artillery ammunition, brought down by your fire three enemy aeroplanes.
“Your troops have been admirable in their attack. You must be proud of the courage of your officers and men; and I consider it an honor to have them under my command.
“The bravery and dash of your regiment won the admiration of the 2nd Moroccan Division who are them selves versed in warfare. Thanks to you, during those hard days, the Division was at all times in advance of all other divisions of the Army Corps. I am sending you all my thanks and beg you to transmit them to your subordinates.
“I called on your wounded. Their morale is higher than any praise.
—Goybet. ”
The 92nd Division encountered difficulties in organization and was never assembled as a Division until it arrived in France. There it was finally gotten in shape and took a small part in the Argonne offensive and in the fight just preceding the armistice. Their Commanding General said:
“Five months ago today the 92nd Division landed in France.
“After seven weeks of training, it took over a sector in the front line, and since that time some portion of the Division has been practically continuously under fire.
“It participated in the last battle of the war with creditable success, continuously pressing the attack against highly organized defensive works. It advanced successfully on the first day of the battle, attaining its objectives and capturing prisoners. This in the face of determined opposition by an alert enemy, and against rifle, machine-gun and artillery fire. The issue of the second day’s battle was rendered indecisive by the order to cease firing at eleven A. M.—when the armistice became effective.”67
With the small chance thus afforded, Negro troops nevertheless made a splendid record and especially those under Negro officers. If they had had larger opportunity and less organized prejudice they would have done much more. Perhaps their greatest credit is from the fact that they withstood so bravely and uncomplainingly the bar rage of hatred and offensive prejudice aimed against them. The young Negro officers especially made a splendid record as to thinking, guiding leaders of an oppressed group.
Thus has the black man defended America from the beginning to the World War. To him our in dependence from Europe and slavery is in no small degree due.
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IV
The Emancipation of Democracy
How the black slave by his incessant struggle to be free has broadened the basis of democracy in America and in the world.
Help in exploration, labor unskilled and to some extent skilled, and fighting, have been the three gifts which so far we have considered as having been contributed by black folk to America. We now turn to a matter more indefinite and yet perhaps of greater importance.
Without the active participation of the Negro in the Civil War, the Union could not have been saved, nor slavery destroyed, in the nineteenth century.68 Without the help of black soldiers, the independence of the United States could not have been gained in the eighteenth century. But the Negro’s contribution to America was at once more subtle and important than these things. Dramatically, the Negro is the central thread of American history. The whole story turns on him whether we think of the dark and flying slave ship in the sixteenth century, the expanding plantations of the seventeenth, the swelling commerce of the eighteenth, or the fight for freedom in the nineteenth. It was the black man that raised a vision of democracy in America such as neither Americans nor Europeans conceived in the eighteenth century, and such as they have not even accepted in the twentieth century; and yet a conception which every clear sighted man knows is true and inevitable.
1. Democracy
Democracy was not planted full grown in America. It was a slow growth beginning in Europe and developing further and more quickly in America. It did not envisage at first, the man farthest down as a participant