When Lincoln reached the camp of black soldiers, he witnessed a scene of overpowering emotion. The men who lined up two deep on each side of the road laughed, cried, and cheered, sending up hosannas for their beloved liberator. “They crowded about him and fondled his horse; some of them kissed his hands,” wrote Porter, “while others ran off crying in triumph to their comrades that they had touched his clothes.”88 Badeau told Edwin Booth that the black troops “had never seemed so to realize the reality of their freedom as when they saw this incarnation or representative of it.”89 Lincoln peeled
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