t are fittingly commemorated in the
noble monument by St. Gaudens, recently erected on Boston Common, to
stand as an inspiration of freedom and patriotism for the future and
as testimony that a race which for generations had been deprived of
arms and liberty could worthily bear the one and defend the other.

Douglass was instrumental in persuading the government to put colored
soldiers on an equal footing with white soldiers, both as to pay and
protection. In the course of these efforts he was invited to visit
President Lincoln. He describes this memorable interview in detail in
his _Life and Times_. The President welcomed him with outstretched
hands, put him at once at his ease, and listened patiently and
attentively to all that he had to say. Douglass maintained that
colored soldiers should receive the same pay as white soldiers, should
be protected and exchanged as prisoners, and should be rewarded, by
promotion, for deeds of valor. The President suggested some of the
difficulties to be overcome; but both he and Secretary of War Stanton,
whom Douglass also visited, assured him that in the end his race
should be justly treated. Stanton, before the close of the interview
with him, promised Douglass a commission as assistant adjutant
to General Lorenzo Thomas, then recruiting colored troops in the
Mississippi Valley. But Stanton evidently changed his mind, since the
commission, somewhat to Douglass's chagrin, never came to hand.

When McClellan had been relieved by Grant, and the new leader of the
Union forces was fighting the stubbornly contested campaign of the
Wilderness, President Lincoln again sent for Douglass, to confer with
him with reference to bringing slaves in the rebel States within the
Union lines, so that in the event of premature peace as many slaves
as possible might be free. Douglass undertook, at the President's
suggestion, to organize a band of colored scouts to go among the
negroes and induce them to enter the Union lines. The plan was never
carried out, owing to the rapid success of the Union arms; but the
interview greatly impressed Douglass with the sincerity of the
President's conviction against slavery and his desire to see the war
result in its overthrow. What the colored race may have owed to the
services, in such a quarter, of such an advocate as Douglass, brave,
eloquent, high-principled, and an example to Lincoln of what the
enslaved race was capable of, can only be imagined. That Lincoln