History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest (ebook)

Description

by Edward A. Johnson

eBook, 158 pages

Edward Austin Johnson (1860–1944) was an attorney who became the first African-American member of the New York state legislature when he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1917 as a Republican. He is best-known as the author of “A School History of the Negro Race in America”, which was the first textbook by a black author to be approved by the North Carolina State Board of Education for use in the public schools. In 1899 Johnson published “History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War”. In this book Johnson writes of a time when the Negro troops preserved the life of Theodore Roosevelt: “When Colonel Theodore Roosevelt returned from the command of the famous Rough Riders, he delivered a farewell address to his men, in which he made the following kind reference to the gallant Negro soldiers: ‘Now, I want to say just a word more to some of the men I see standing around not of your number. I refer to the colored regiments, who occupied the right and left flanks of us at Guásimas, the Ninth and Tenth cavalry regiments. The Spaniards called them ‘Smoked Yankees,’ but we found them to be an excellent breed of Yankees. I am sure that I speak the sentiments of officers and men in the assemblage when I say that between you and the other cavalry regiments there exists a tie which we trust will never be broken.’ The foregoing compliments to the Negro soldiers by Colonel Roosevelt started up an avalanche of additional praise for them, out of which the fact came, that but for the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry (colored) coming up at Las Guásimas, destroying the Spanish block house and driving the Spaniards off, when Roosevelt and his men had been caught in a trap, with a barbed-wire fence on one side and a precipice on the other, not only the brave Capron and Fish, but the whole of his command would have been annihilated by the Spanish sharp-shooters, who were firing with smokeless powder under cover, and picking off the Rough Riders one by one, who could not see the Spaniards.”

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