Lincoln Movie Mrs. Keckley's son, who was at least 3/4s white, had claimed to be a white man and enlisted in the U. S. Army when blacks were not permitted to enlist. Had the army recruiters known that his mother was a mulatto slave, he would not have been permitted to serve. Mrs. Keckley's son was killed in battle early in the war. In the movie, when the Abraham Lincoln character says that he doesn't know her people, she responds by saying:

As for me: My son died, fighting for the Union, wearing the Union blue. For freedom he died. I'm his mother. That's what I am to the nation, Mr. Lincoln. What else must I be?

What does it mean that in 1865 a black woman would say that her significance to the nation was that she was the mother of a Union soldier who died in the war?