#OnThisDayInHistory (1838), Lucy Higgs Nichols was born enslaved. In 1862, she escaped with her daughter Lucy, walking nearly 30 miles to reach the 23rd Indiana Infantry. The soldiers protected her under the Confiscation Acts, and she stayed with them as a nurse, cook, and seamstress. They came to call her “Aunt Lucy.” After the war, she settled in Indiana, but when the government denied her a nurse’s pension, 55 veterans petitioned Congress in her behalf. In 1898, a special act finally granted