When Hannah Johnson wrote President Abraham Lincoln in the
summer of 1863, she expressed the concerns of any mother with a
son fighting a war. But she had a special request: "I am a
colored woman and my son was strong and able as any to fight for
his country and the colored people have as much to fight for as
any.... Will you see that the colored men fighting now, are
fairly treated. You ought to do this, and do it at once." On
Jan. 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation became the first
authorization by an American president to enroll Johnson's son,
and other black men, as legal soldiers for the United States
military. Emancipation and the enlistment of black soldiers were
not Lincoln's initial impulse. He wanted to make a gradual
change, as he wrote in this letter explaining his shift to an
advisor: "When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest,
and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated
emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for
military emancipation, and arming