"Preparing for This New Time"

By January 1866, only 200 of the original 1,000 men who enlisted in the Sixty-second U.S. Colored Infantry remained in the ranks. The War Department ordered the ten companies consolidated to four and the reduction of the regiment’s officers.

Two of the discharged officers, Capt. Richard B. Foster and 1st Lt. Aaron M. Adamson, had served in Company I.

According to Capt. Foster, soon after he learned that he would be mustered out of the army, “Lieutenant Adamson was one day talking with me, as comrades about to part will do, of the past and future, when, referring to the fact that many of the enlisted men had learned to read and write, imperfectly of course, while in the service, I remarked that it was a pity these men should find no schools when they returned to Missouri,” from where they had enlisted in 1863.

Both men reflected on the transformation of the enlisted men with whom they served. “No more shall the auction block be mounted by human chattels. No more shall education be forbidden and virtue be impossible for any part of our population. The fugitive slave law is behind us. Universal suffrage is before us.”

The conversation brought to the surface a question that burned within Foster: “Have I any special work to do, however humble, in preparing for this new time?”

1st Lt. Adamson supplied the answer: “If our regiment will give money enough to start a school in Missouri, will you take charge of it?”

Foster eventually answered in the affirmative. The officers and men raised $1,379.50, and Foster went on to establish Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri. Today, it is known as Lincoln University.

Read Foster's historical sketch of the founding of the school.