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In that same message occurs also the following:

"Incidentally I may add that the soldiers of longest service and highest position, who suffered because of the order, so far as being those who deserve most sympathy, deserve least, for they are the very men upon whom we should be able especially to rely to prevent mutiny and murder."

In his message of January 14, submitting the Purdy testimony, occurs the following:

"The evidence, as will be seen, shows beyond any possibility of honest question that some individuals among the colored troops whom I have dismissed committed the outrages mentioned, and that some or all of the other individuals whom I dismissed had knowledge of the deed and shielded from the law those who committed it."

And then, finally in that same message, as though afraid his numerous positive and unqualified statements on this point would not be believed, he said:

"It is out of the question that the fifteen or twenty men engaged in the assault could have gathered behind the wall of the fort, begun firing, some of them on the porches of the barracks, gone out into the town, fired in the neighborhood of 200 shots in the town, and then returned-the total time occupied from the time of the first shot to the time of their return being somewhere in the neighborhood of ten minutes-without many of their comrades knowing what they had done.

"Indeed, the fuller details as established by the additional evidence taken since I last communicated with the Senate make it likely that there were very few if any, of the soldiers dismissed who could have been ignorant of what occurred. It is well-nigh impossible that any of the non-commissioned officers who were of the barracks should not have known what occurred."

While these assertions, repeated over and over again in the most extravagant language, show after all, as General Garlington reported, that there was no evidence to establish a conspiracy of silence, and that the charges and assertions that there was such a conspiracy rested only on deductions that there must have been such a conspiracy because nobody would tell of that about which all claimed to have no knowledge, yet that very fact but emphasizes the President's unfit state of mind to act judicially in passing upon the applications of these men to re-enlist as proposed in the bill introduced by the Senator from Missouri.

If these men are innocent, as they claim and as I believe, what else could they have said or done? Will some man please tell what word any one of them has uttered or what thing any one of them has done inconsistent with the innocence they assert. And yet, because they have said and done precisely what as innocent men they should have said and done, for that very reason they are arraigned as guilty of conspiracy and denounced in terms harsh enough to manifest exasperation because they will not confirm the charges against them and thereby

establish an excuse for the crime that has been so inconsiderately committed against them and their rights, if they are in fact innocent, as they claim to be.

It would seem that we are to be carried back in the administration of justice to the days when men and women put on trial for witchcraft found no avenue of escape from punishment, brutality, and execution, except only in confession—to the days when if a man but stood mute he was liable to be put to death for it.

The President gives no intimation, except as already indicated, that his mind has undergone any change. He would therefore become judge of the worthiness of these men to re-enlist if we should pass the bill introduced by the Senator from Missouri, firmly possessed of the conviction that very few, if any of them, were free from guilt. In other words, practically every man of the battalion would have to prove his innocence before one who has over and over again formally and publicly adjudged him guilty and denounced him as guilty in the severest language of censure and condemnation.

Another reason why this duty should not be intrusted to the President is that it would be impossible for him to act upon all these cases in detail, giving to the testimony of each of the 167 men, if all should apply to re-enlist, that careful consideration which fair-dealing would require.

It may be assumed that no one would expect him to personally examine the testimony in each case and pass judgment as the bill contemplates. He would of necessity have to call some one to his assistance to examine the testimony and advise him, but who would that be? Possibly the Secretary of War, who has expressed his agreement with the President in all he has said and done in the whole matter, and in every other matter. (Laughter.) But he, too, is a busy man, and would doubtless require the help of a suitable subordinate, and thus in all probability General Garlington, as the Inspector-General of the Army, and one of the officers who made a special investigation, would again come to the front, and to know his unfitness for such a duty we have but to recall that he testified before the Committee on Military Affairs that he would not believe anything anyone of these soldiers might say about this matter, even under oath, unless corroborated in some satisfactory way.

But if none of these should be called upon to assist the President, then somebody else nobody knows who would become the judicial adviser, to the satisfaction of whose whim the men would have to prove their innocence.

Moreover, how would such a proceeding be conducted? Would it be public or private? It is a constitutional right of the most important character that all trials upon indictments involving criminal charges and convictions shall be public, to the end that the public may see to it, through the power of public sentiment, that no man shall be unfairly condemned. This trial would not be within the letter, but it would be within the spirit of the Constitution, for these men are not now soldiers to be dealt with arbitrarily, but plain American citizens, invested with all the rights of citizenship, who are seeking not only a restoration of their good names, but also of valuable property rights, to all of which they are confessedly entitled, if not found guilty of crime. They should

not be dealt with, therefore, in the dark, as though a lot of chattels, for that day for the American Negro has forever passed, but as American citizens, entitled to the same rights white men would have under the same conditions.

In so far as we are to be governed by the fact that they were soldiers and may be soldiers again, we should remember, as Secretary Taft said of the white soldiers who shot up the town of Athens, Ohio, that they are, in a sense, the wards of the Government, and for that reason entitled, under such circumstances, to the protection of the Government in all their legal rights. And if we are to be further reminded, as we have been, that the President is the Commander in Chief of the Army, it is a sufficient answer that, while that is true, yet also it is true that he does not create the Army. It is not for him to say who shall enlist or re-enlist. All that belongs to Congress.

In short, there is no excuse whatever for such a bill. To pass it would be but pretending to grant relief, for manifestly, unless there has been a decided change of mind, practically none would follow.

Our action would but add insult to injury. It would be without precedent, for it may be safely asserted, that never before in the history of civilization has a legislative body been invited to require men accused of crime to prove their innocence before a hostile judge who has already adjudged them guilty; and never before has there been a suggestion that any man worthy to sit in judgment upon the rights of his countrymen would accept such a duty if assigned him, if conscious of having the slightest prejudice against the accused.

By what right does the Senator from Missouri assume that the PresiIdent is capable of such a manifest impropriety?

The vilest horse thief, the most dangerous burglar, or the bloodiest murderer would not be required either to prove his innocence or to submit to a trial before a judge who had in even the most casual way expressed the opinion that the defendant was guilty.

Such a performance would be justly denounced as a denial of one of the most sacred rights of citizenship and a lasting disgrace to the judge who perpetrated it.

Who are these men that it should be even suggested that they should be treated worse than common criminals?

They are at once both citizens and soldiers of the Republic. Aside from these charges, which they deny, their behavior, both in the Army and out of it, has justly excited the highest commendation. Their record is without spot or blemish.

They are typical representatives of a race that has ever been loyal to America and American institutions; a race that has never raised a hostile hand against our country's flag; a race that has contributed to the nation tens of thousands of brave defenders, not one of whom has ever turned traitor or faltered in his fidelity.

In every war in which we have permitted them to participate they have distinguished themselves for efficiency and valor. They have shed their blood and laid down their lives in the fierce shock of battle, side by side with their white comrades.

They are the direct and worthy successors of the brave men who so heroically died at Petersburg, at Wagner, and on scores of bloody fields that this nation might live.

Faithfully, uncomplainingly, with pride and devotion, they have performed all their duties and kept all their obligations.

They ask no favors because they are Negroes, but only for justice because they are men. (Applause in the galleries.)

The speech was not only well received by the Senate, but also by the whole country. I received hundreds of letters and telegrams of congratulation in addition to other hundreds that were orally extended.

Among these letters, and one I prize very highly, was the following from Dr. J. G. Schurman, President of Cornell University:

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,
CORNELL UNIVERSITY,
ITHACA, NEW YORK.

April 27, 1908.

My Dear Senator Foraker:-I read last night the speech you made in the Senate on April 14th on the Brownsville matter. I may say that I read every sentence of it and read it carefully.

The first thing I should like to say about it is that it is extremely interesting. The next is that as a statement and argument it is overpoweringly conclusive. I had not before gone exhaustively into the details of this subject, having read only the newspaper reports and brief abstracts of speeches. But after reading your speech I am absolutely convinced, as I had previously been led to believe, that the President has made a terrible mistake and that men have been dismissed without honor from the Army against whom there is not a scintilla of evidence proving them guilty of wrong-doing.

The spirit of your address is admirable. A deliverance from the bench could scarcely have been more judicial. If there are political antagonisms within the Republican Party, there is certainly no evidence of it in your speech. It reminds me rather of a scientific investigation or a judicial inquiry, where the sole object is to discover the truth on the basis of the facts of the case. And there is one feature of your address which illustrates the maxim of the greatest scientific investigator of the last century or two. Darwin said that in the pursuit of scientific truth it was the trifling facts which were significant. On the face of it the discovery of those shells within a circle of ten inches in diameter was a most "trifling" fact. Yet what immense consequences you have drawn from it and from the story of the four guns!

You had an enviable opportunity of rendering the highest service to the cause of justice and to the rights of man, and you have acquitted yourself with triumphant distinction. The speech is destined to accomplish great immediate good. And it will long be remembered as the voice of a public conscience outraged by the injustice, dishonor, and tyranny to which American citizens have been exposed. Very sincerely yours,

THE HON. J. B. FORAKER,

Senate Chamber,

J. G. SCHURMAN.

Washington, D. C.

I

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE BROWNSVILLE AFFRAY-Continued.

HAVE shown that the testimony first submitted by Major Blocksom, although only loose-jointed, unsworn, inconsistent and contradictory statements, was regarded by the President as "conclusive," but that after I had dissected it and shown its deficiencies and general unworthiness, he sent Major Blocksom back to Brownsville, accompanied by Mr. Purdy, to secure the same testimony under oath and all additional testimony that it was possible to get against the men, and that on their return to Washington they brought with them a lot of affidavits and a number of exhibits, which the President again deemed "conclusive” in character, and so conclusive that he did not hesitate, in his official Message to the Senate to impugn the honesty of any one who would upon such testimony pretend to doubt the truth of the charges upon which he had acted.

The testimony taken originally was ex parte and not sworn to. The testimony taken in the second instance by Purdy and Blocksom was given under oath, but it was ex parte. The men had no notice of the proceeding, and, therefore, had no one present to cross-examine the witnesses, or to represent them in any way whatever.

In both his Messages transmitting the testimony the President had ignored the sworn testimony given by the men, and also that which was given by their white commissioned officers, all of whom were gentlemen of the very highest and most unimpeachable character.

Having twice submitted "indisputable and overwhelming testimony" and the committee having taken thousands of pages of evidence in connection with which the men were subjected to the most rigid cross-examination, I was quite sur

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