HKB
in the campaigns in the West; in short, they were model soldiers in every respect; not only in courage have they done themselves credit, but in their conduct as well."
When the Second Volunteer regiment of Immunes (white) became so disorderly in Santiago that they had to be sent outside to the hills for better discipline, General Shafter ordered into the city the Eighth Illinois regiment of colored troops, who had an unsullied name for sobriety and discipline, and enjoyed the thorough confidence of those in command. And the following brief compendium of Spanish war mention from a few of the leading press of the country is good reading. A soldier writing home to friends in Springfield said: "You want to see the Negroes; they let out a yell and charge, and the fight is over." Arthur Partridge, of Co. B, writes: "At first we got the worst of it, but we received reinforcements from the two regiments of colored infantry, who walked right up to the block house, against their whole fire; they lost heavily, but it put heart into everybody, and the way we drove those Spaniards was a caution. A colored man can have anything of mine he wants. When storming they yelled like fiends." Corporal Keating of Co. B writes: "The Negroes are fighters from their toes up. They saved Roosevelt at the first battle, and took one of the forts in the battle a few days ago."
Thomas Holmes, a Rough Rider, who hails from Newkirk, Oklahoma, was the magnet of attraction at St. Paul's Hospital, says a writer in the New York Tribune. "He is a handsome, stalwart fellow, full of anecdote and good humor, and popular all around. He was sitting next to Corporal Johnson, of the Tenth Cavalry, a Negro who still carries a Mauser bullet somewhere 'inside of me inside,' as he expressed it. 'The colored cavalry fought well, eh?' interjected the clergyman. 'Indeed they did,' said Holmes, fervently. 'That old idea about a "yellow streak" being in a Negro is all wrong. No men could have fought more bravely, and I want to tell you that but for the coming up of the Tenth Cavalry the Rough Riders might have been cut to pieces.' 'Oh, he is just talking,' said the colored man, who smiled like a happy child nevertheless."
Says the "Philadelphia Daily Press:" "At every forward movement in our national life the Negro comes to the front and shares in the advance with each national expansion. He does his part of the work, and deserves equal recognition. At Santiago two Negro regiments--the Ninth, in General Sumner's Brigade, and the Tenth, in General Bates'--were at the front in the center of the line. With the rest they crested the heights of San Juan; with the rest they left their men thickly scattered on the slope, and since they shared in death every member of the race has a right to ask that in life no rights be denied and no privileges curtailed. The white regiments that connected them in that thin blue line, that slender hoop of steel which hemmed in more than its opposing number, may have held men who hesitate about this and that, contact with color; but on that Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, when risk and peril hung heavy over the line, there was no hesitation in closing up on the Ninth and Tenth Regiments, because the men in them were colored. All honor to the black troops of the gallant Tenth."