We allude to the participation of colored
men in the great struggle for American freedom. It is not in accordance
with our taste or our principles to eulogize the shedders of blood even
in a cause of acknowledged justice; but when we see a whole nation doing
honor to the memories of one class of its defenders to the total neglect
of another class, who had the misfortune to be of darker complexion, we
cannot forego the satisfaction of inviting notice to certain historical
facts which for the last half century have been quietly elbowed aside,
as no more deserving of a place in patriotic recollection than the
descendants of the men to whom the facts in question relate have to a
place in a Fourth of July procession.
Of the services and sufferings of the colored soldiers of the Revolution
no attempt has, to our knowledge, been made to preserve a record. They
have had no historian. With here and there an exception, they have all
passed away; and only some faint tradition of their campaigns under
Washington and Greene and Lafayette, and of their cruisings under Decatur
and Barry, lingers among their, descendants.
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