On this day in 1863, Frederick Douglass (R-MD) met with President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) for the first time. Senator Samuel Pomeroy (R-KS) escorted Douglass to the War Department building. On arrival, Douglass urged Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to allow equal pay for African-American soldiers in the U.S. Army. Though sympathetic, Stanton said that would require congressional approval, which he supported. Next, Douglass was introduced to the president at the White House. Lincoln stood and shook his hand "just as you have seen one gentleman receive another," Douglass later recounted. "I at once felt myself in the present of an...
