Its tone is in accordance
with the multitude of articles upon the same subject
which occurred about the same time, and, like them all,
or most of them, is rather farfetched. It is too broad.
Its denunciations cover too much ground. They verge
upon untruth.
As to Conyers and McClellan at the Naval Academy I
know nothing. Of Napier I know nothing. Of Smith I
prefer to say nothing. Of Williams I do express the
belief that his treatment was impartial and just.
He was regularly and rightly found deficient and
duly dismissed. The article seems to imply that he
should not have been "found" and dismissed simply
because he was a negro. A very shallow reason indeed,
and one "no fair-minded man" will for an instant
entertain.
Of four years' life at the Academy, I spent the
first with Smith, rooming with him. During the
first half year Williams was also in the corps
with us. The two following years I was alone. The
next and last year of my course I spent with
Whittaker, of South Carolina. I have thus had an
opportunity to become acquainted with Smith's
conduct and that of the cadets toward him. Smith
had trouble under my own eyes on more than one
occasion, and Whittaker* has already received blows
in the face, but I have not had so much as an angry
word to utter. There is a reason for all this, and
had "Niger Nigrorum" been better acquainted with it
he had never made the blunder he has.
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