President declares null and void exequatur heretofore given Charles Hunt as consul of Belgium at St. Louis. Washington Star, 20 May 1864; Proclamation Revoking Recognition of Charles Hunt, 19 May 1864, CW, 7:352.

Lincoln writes to staunch abolitionist U.S. Senator Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts. Lincoln introduces Mary Elizabeth Booth, whose husband, Major Lionel Booth, a black officer, was killed in battle on April 12, at Fort Pillow, Tennessee. Lincoln writes, "She makes a point . . . very worthy of consideration which is, widows and children infact, of colored soldiers who fall in our service, be placed in law, the same as if their marriages were legal, so that they can have the benefit of the provisions made the widows & orphans of white soldiers. Please see & hear Mrs. Booth." Abraham Lincoln to Charles Sumner, 19 May 1864, CW, 10:243-44; Roy P. Basler, "And for His Widow and His Orphan," Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 27, no. 4 (October 1970): 291-94.