On May 19, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln wrote to anti-slavery Congressional leader Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, proposing that widows and children of soldiers should be given equal treatment regardless of race. Lincoln sent Mary Booth, a black woman whose husband had been killed at Fort Pillow, to tell Sumner what she had told Lincoln. The result was H.R. 406, Section 13 that provides for the equal treatment of the dependents of black soldiers.
