Crowder) will be cited later on.
Of the four colored regiments in the Regular Army, the 24th infantry had been on the Mexican border since 1916; the 25th infantry in Hawaii all the years of the war; the Ninth cavalry in the Philippines since 1916, and the 10th cavalry had been doing patrol and garrison duty on the Mexican border and elsewhere in the west since early in 1917.

These four regiments were all sterling organizations dating their foundation back to the days immediately following the Civil war.

Their record was and is an enviable one.

It is no reflection on them that they were not chosen for overseas duty.

The country needed a dependable force on the Mexican border, in Hawaii, the Philippines, and in different garrisons at home.
A number of good white Regular Army regiments were kept on this side for the same reasons; not however, overlooking or minimizing the fact not to the honor of the nation in its final resolve, that there has always been fostered a spirit in the counsels and orders of the Department of War, as in all the other great government departments, to restrain rather than to encourage the patriotic and civic zeal of their faithful and qualified Negro aids and servants.