After the assassination of President Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln and Keckley remained close friends until 1868, when Keckley’s diaries were published as a book, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. Mary Todd Lincoln considered the book a betrayal and broke off her relationship with Keckley. Even several noted African Americans criticized Keckleyt for what they believed to be a dishonorable attack on “the Great Emancipator.” Nonetheless, the book has long been considered an invaluable resource for scholars of the Lincoln presidency.

Elizabeth Keckley was born a slave at Dinwiddie Court House in Virginia around 1818. Her earliest recollections of slave life come at age four, when she began taking care of her owner’s child. At about age eighteen Keckley was sold to a North Carolinian, who fathered her son. Later, when her master moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, her skills as a seamstress provided much needed income for the entire household. After a disastrous marriage…Elizabeth decided to use her own considerable talents to provide a better life for herself and her son.

In May 1835 she published, in two volumes, Journal of a Residence in America, which was a record of her tour, and freely though goodnaturedly she criticized the various American customs. The young republic was touchy, however, and for a time she was roundly abused. The winter of 1838-39 she spent with her husband on his Georgia plantation where for the first time she saw the inside workings of slavery and realized the source of her husband’s income.

It is not an undertaking so great as to strain the resources of our government to take the thirty thousand or thereabout Indian children of school age and scatter them among the schools of the United States, thus freeing them from the tribal relations and influences, and, having provided for their education, let them shift for themselves as laborers, craftsmen or in other walks of life according to their tastes and opportunities.

Pratt, Richard Henry

For over fifty years, King was a member of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York, which was founded by his father-in-law, John Tasker Howard. Henry Ward Beecher was pastor there from 1847 until his death in 1887. The two men became as close as brothers. King first became entranced by Beecher while at Dickinson. Along with eighteen other students, he attended an abolitionist speech by Beecher at the First Presbyterian Church in Harrisburg. According to King, all of the students were Democrats and anti-abolitionists.

PRATT, Richard Henry, army officer; b. Rushford, N.Y., Dec. 6, 1840; s. Richard S. and Mary Herrick P.; ed. Logansport, Ind.: m.; Delphi, Ind., Apr. 12, 1864, Anna L. Mason. Served in Ind. vols., corp. to capt., 1861-5. Apptd. in regular army 2d lt. 10th cav., Man. 7, 1867; 1st lt. July 31, 1867; capt. Feb. 17, 1883; maj. 1st cav. July 1, 1898; transferred to 10th cav. Aug. 2, 1899; lt.-col. 14th cav. Feb. 2, 1901; transferred to 15th cav. Mar. 7, 1901; col. Feb., 1903, and retired Feb. 17, 1903. Suggested and organized the Industrial Sch. for Indians in 1879 and was its only supt.

Colonel Lewis R. Stegman: It happens that a large part of the honors incident to this dedication has fallen to the cavalry. General Horatio C. King, who comes next on the programme, enjoys the distinction of having been a member of the far-famed Cavalry Corps which was commanded by General Sheridan. It is not necessary for me to say much in introducing General King to you ; he is well known in veteran circles all over the country. For several decades General King has been the Secretary of the Society of the Army of the Potomac.

Ever ambitious, eager to grasp another honor, and jealous of his rank and fame, Scott was vain and dogmatic. He was always ready to write a letter when he took offense at some fancied insult. According to one of his biographers, he was generous and outgoing and possessed a "constitutional inability to nurse a grudge" (Elliott, p. 648). He was also an extremely effective commander, most notably in the Mexican War.