' Mr. Clark said if the time had come for
them to be in the United States Senate, it had surely
come for them to be at West Point, and that he would do
all in his power to have me protected. Fred Grant then
said: 'Well, no d--d nigger will ever graduate from West
Point.' This same young gentleman, with other members of
his class, entered the rooms of three cadets, members of
the fourth class, on the night of January 3, 1871, took
those cadets out, and drove them away from the 'Point,'
with nothing on but the light summer suits that they wore
when they reported there the previous summer. Here was a
most outrageous example of Lynch law, disgraceful alike
to the first class, who were the executors of it, the
corps of cadets, who were the abettors of it, and the
authorities of the Academy, who were afraid to punish the
perpetrators because the President's son was implicated,
or, at least, one of the prime movers of the affair.
Congress took the matter in hand, and instructed the
Secretary of War to dismiss all the members of the class
who were implicated, but the latter gentleman 'was
extremely liberal in his interpretation of the
regulations,' and declined to be influenced by the action
of Congress, and let the matter drop.
"Again, when a Court of Inquiry, appointed by Congress to
investigate complaints that I had made of my treatment,
reported in favor of a trial by court-martial of General
Gillmore's son, General Dyer's son, the nephew of the
Secretary of War, and some other lesser lights of America's
aristocracy, the secretary decided that a reprimand was
sufficient for the offence; yet 'he did for me what had
never been done for a white boy in like circumstances.
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