; and thus the simplest thing was
magnified into a very serious offence, for the purpose
of satisfying the desires of a few narrow-minded cadets.
That an officer of the United States Army would allow
his prejudices to carry him so far as to act in that
way to a subordinate, without giving him a chance to
speak a word in his defence--nay, without allowing him
to know what charge had been made against him, and that
he should be upheld in such action by the 'powers that
be,' are sufficient proof to my mind of the feelings
which the officers themselves maintained towards us.
While I was in ranks, during parade, and my friends
were quietly sitting down looking at the parade, another
model 'officer and gentleman,' Captain Alexander Piper,
Third Artillery--he was president of my second court-
martial--came up, in company with a lady, and ordered
my brother and sister to get up and let him have their
camp-stools, and he actually took away the camp-stools
and left them standing, while a different kind of a
gentleman--an 'obscure citizen,' with no aristocratic
West Point dignity to boast of--kindly tendered his
camp-stool to my sister.
"I only wish I knew the name of that gentleman; but I
could not see him then, or I should certainly have
found it out, though in answer to my brother's question
as to his name, he simply replied, 'I am an obscure
citizen.' What a commentary on our 'obscure citizens,'
who know what it is to be gentlemen in something else
besides the name--gentlemen in practice, not only in
theory--and who can say with Burns that 'a mans a man
for a' that,' whether his face be as black as midnight
or as white as the driven snow.
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