Grave of John Wilkes Booth

[David Lockmiller]

(01-15-2018 04:16 PM)KLarson Wrote:  Visitors to the Fort Hill Cemetery (Auburn, NY) grave of the legendary former slave and Underground Railroad conductor, Harriet Tubman, leave pennies all over her headstone and on the ground. They also leave stones and seashells (an African custom.)

In August of 1864, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman met in Boston. In his book Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend, author Carlton Mabee writes, "Truth tried to persuade Tubman that (Abraham) Lincoln was a real friend to blacks, but Tubman insisted he was not because he allowed black soldiers to be paid less than white soldiers."

Frederick Douglass:

My first interview with [President Lincoln] was in the summer of 1863, soon after the Confederate States had declared their purpose not to treat any such soldiers as prisoners of war subject to exchange like other soldiers. My visit to Mr. Lincoln was in reference to this threat of the Confederate States. . . .

I said: “Mr. Lincoln, I am recruiting colored troops. I have assisted in fitting up two regiments in Massachusetts, and am now at work in the same way in Pennsylvania, and have come to say this to you, sir, if you wish to make this branch of the service successful you must do four things:

“First – You must give colored soldiers the same pay that you give white soldiers.” . . .
To this little speech Mr. Lincoln listened with earnest attention and with very apparent sympathy, and replied to each point in his own peculiar, forcible way. First, he spoke of his opposition generally to employing Negroes as soldiers at all, of the prejudice against the race, and of the advantage to colored people that would result from their being employed as soldiers in defense of their country. He regarded such an employment as an experiment, and spoke of the advantage it would be to the colored race if the experiment should succeed. He said that he had difficulty in getting colored men into the United States uniform; that when the purpose was fixed to employ them as soldiers, several different uniforms were proposed for them, and that it was something gained when it was finally determined to clothe them like other soldiers.

Now, as to the pay, we had to make some concession to prejudice. There were threats that if we made soldiers of them at all white men would not enlist, would not fight beside them. Besides, it was not believed that a Negro could make a good soldier, as good a soldier as a white man, and hence it was thought that he should not have the same pay as a white man. But said he, “I assure you, Mr. Douglass, that in the end they shall have the same pay as white soldiers.”

(Source: “Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time,” collected and edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, 1888, pages 185-88.)

It is unfortunate that neither Sojourner Truth nor Harriet Tubman had been aware when they met in August 1864 of the details of this conversation that had taken place in the White House between Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln one year earlier. Frederick Douglass’ details of his conversation with President Lincoln were not published until 1888. Undoubtedly, Harriet Tubman’s opinion of Abraham Lincoln would have been markedly different had she known. But I think now that many visitors to the grave site of Harriet Tubman believe that Harriet Tubman and President Abraham Lincoln were of one mind, as they really were.