In 1898, the prominent educator and clergyman Theophilus Gould Steward was a chaplain serving with the U.S. Twenty-Fifth Regiment. Steward commemorated the service of this African American regiment by authoring this book. Although some African American soldiers saw similarities between their own struggle for civil rights and that of Filipinos, Steward viewed military service as a means to argue for full citizenship. Steward was stationed in the Philippines in 1900. During his service there, he was appointed superintendent of schools in the central island of Luzon.