Description
Letter from Iowa Governor William M. Stone to Abraham Lincoln recommending appointment of Walter B. Scates as Brigadier General with the African Corps (United States Colored Troops). January 20, 1864. Nearly 180,000 African American soldiers served in the USCT, established in 1863 in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation; white officers commanded all regiments. Scates had been chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1855 to 1857. Stone was a friend of Lincoln.
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