A Guide to Civil War Washington, D.C.: The Capital of the Union

by Arcadia Publishing

Overview

Read the history of the CIvil War from the perspective of the Washington DC capital.

When the first shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861, Washington, D.C., was a small, essentially Southern city. The capital rapidly transformed as it prepared for invasion—army camps sprung up in Foggy Bottom, the Navy Yard on Anacostia was a beehive of activity and even the Capitol was pressed into service as a barracks. Local citizens and government officials struggled to accommodate the fugitive slaves and troops that crowded into the city. From the story of one of the first African American army surgeons, Dr. Alexander Augusta, to the tireless efforts of Clara Barton, historian Lucinda Prout Janke renders an intimate portrait of a community on the front lines of war. Join Janke as she guides readers through the changing landscape of a capital besieged.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609498474
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	03/19/2013
Series:	Civil War Series
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	917,523
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Lucinda Prout Janke is a long-time resident of the Capitol Hill Historic District in Washington, D.C. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Museum Studies from The George Washington University. Now an independent historian, she was Curator of the Kiplinger Washington Collection and Collections Manager at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Gary Scott is a National Park Service researcher, lecturer, and architectural historian in Washington, D.C. He received his BA from Southwestern University and MA from the University of North Carolina, and has taught extensively. He recently helped identify items that belonged to Clara Barton in a building that was scheduled for demolition in D.C.

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CHAPTER 1

Lincoln's Capital City

The State Of The Federal City

In 1861, Washington City occupied only a portion of the District of Columbia. It was bordered by Rock Creek, the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers and Florida Avenue, then known as Boundary Street. Georgetown was a separate, older municipality across Rock Creek, with its own government; the rest of the District was known as the county. The capital had not yet filled out its ambitious if not grandiose 1791 city plan, and the District itself was only two-thirds its original size. The Virginia portion of the original ten-mile square, including the older port city of Alexandria, had been retroceded to that state in 1846.

As a capital city, Washington City really wasn't much, subject to unflattering comments for its unkempt appearance sixty years after the federal government arrived there. It did not measure up to London, Rome or its predecessors as the American capital, especially New York and Philadelphia. It had recovered from the traumatic events of 1814, when most of the public buildings were destroyed during the British invasion. It had grown, however, if not as rapidly as expected, from a population of 3,200 in 1800, when the government moved from Philadelphia, to 61,000 in 1860. The growth of the government as well as the country occasioned the need for new, larger public buildings, including the Capitol Building, then undergoing the construction of additions.

In the 1850s, Edward Sachse of Baltimore began publishing large, bird's-eye views of Washington. His first, in 1852, showed the Capitol with its old dome; later versions anticipated more complete versions of both the Capitol, with its new cast iron dome, and the Washington Monument. Sachse produced not only these panoramic views in the late 1850s and early 1860s but also a series of small lithographs of individual buildings, inadvertently creating a good visual record of the pre — Civil War capital.

The White House was a bit shabby. Congress was only there part time. The Capitol was under construction, as were large new buildings for the Treasury, Patent Office and Post Office, the latter three all occasioned by fires. They were designed by Robert Mills in the 1830s and would take three decades to complete under the supervision of other architects. The Patent Office and Post Office were displaced in an 1836 fire in the old Blodgett's Hotel, where they were both then located. The State, War and Navy Departments occupied old red-brick buildings on either side of the White House. The government employed a couple thousand clerks. Residents were scattered, the roads were terrible and entertainments were relatively few.

The Mall was not as we know it today, nor as L'Enfant planned it, but it did house the newly built Smithsonian Institution, designed in marked contrast to the white neoclassical public buildings. There was not the proliferation of museums now associated with the Mall. Corcoran's Art Gallery, nearly complete but not yet open, was also built of red brick in a new style. It was the first building in the country to be designed as an art museum — but not the first to open, a direct result of the Civil War.

Near the western edge of the city was another significant scientific institution of pre — Civil War Washington: the National Observatory, a center of navigational and celestial exploration. It had been in operation at its Foggy Bottom location for fifteen years when the Civil War broke out. Located then and now on a hilltop not far from the Potomac River, it was one of the landmarks of the nineteenth- century cityscape.

There were few monuments in the city, especially in contrast to today. When Lincoln arrived in 1861, and during his term in Congress in 1847 — 49, George Washington's unpopular statue by Horatio Greenough sat outside the Capitol. In 1832, the centennial of George Washington's birth, Congress commissioned Greenough, an American sculptor living and working in Rome, to sculpt a commemorative piece for the Capitol Rotunda. Unfortunately, the scantily clad, seated figure of the first president was not well received when it arrived in 1841. It had nearly been lost at sea on the trip across the Atlantic, and the controversial piece has moved uncomfortably about the city since. Too heavy for the Rotunda, it moved in 1843 outside to the east lawn of the Capitol. In 1909, Congress transferred its white elephant to the Smithsonian. It went back inside, first in the Smithsonian Castle and then to the Museum of American History, where it may be seen today.

By the 1840s, when Lincoln was in Congress, the city's first outdoor sculpture, the Tripoli Monument, erected in 1807 at the Washington Navy Yard had been moved to the west side of the Capitol. For many years, it was the city's only monument. But it had disappeared by the time Lincoln returned to the city, sent in 1860 to the newly established United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, where it remains today. The 1847 bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson that stood on the north side of the White House in Lincoln's time is now in the Capitol Rotunda. In 1853, Clark Mills's gravity-defying equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson was dedicated across the street in Lafayette Park. Mills's work was commissioned to honor Jackson's 1815 victory in New Orleans. The general, who served two terms as president from 1829 to 1837, had died in 1845. The statue, the first equestrian one to be cast in the United States, is made of copper and bronze supplied by the navy. The inscription on the pedestal, specified by Mills but not placed there until 1909, was perhaps too controversial in the 1850s: "The Federal Union, It Must Be Preserved." It would be the first of many equestrian statues.

George Washington's own equestrian statue, also by Clark Mills, was dedicated on the eve of war, February 1860, at Washington Circle. The most ambitious monument in honor of George Washington, begun in 1848, however, was an eyesore, an uncompleted stub of an obelisk, a thorn in the capital's side. In 1833, after years of delay in creating a memorial to the first president for the site selected by L'Enfant, the city's designer, a group of citizens established the Washington Monument Society and began to raise money. They hired Robert Mills to design it; his 1836 elaborate scheme, depicted in many anticipatory prints of the time, was never completed. Lack of funds halted construction in 1854; the Civil War delayed it further. The simple, iconic obelisk was finally dedicated in 1885.

The Washingtonians

There were about seventy-five thousand people in the District as a whole. After the election of 1800, none of its residents could vote in presidential elections, nor did they have any representation in Congress, which, according the Constitution, held "exclusive jurisdiction" over the federal district. Most of the residents had strong ties to Maryland or Virginia, both slaveholding states. The city's actual population fluctuated when Congress was in session. Residents of the capital, then as now, consisted of government officials with legal and actual residences elsewhere and the local, permanent citizens of the city, much of whose livelihood depended on the presence of the federal government. The latter were the people with a particularly vested interest in the survival of the city as the national capital. They could not have imagined they would be living near a war zone for four years.

In 1802, the residents were granted a charter for limited self-government, with a mayor and upper and lower legislative houses. In 1820, citizens contracted to build a city hall, which included a courthouse. There were scant municipal facilities and one hospital, also on Judiciary Square, as was the jail. Police and fire departments were loosely organized, and the public school system was largely inadequate. All would be affected by the war.

In the 1860 census, the residents of Washington City numbered just over sixty-one thousand. The capital was still a small city — most people walked to work, church or school or to shop at the markets. Businesses were small and concentrated between the White House and the Capitol, many along Pennsylvania Avenue. Most of the population lived near the White House, Capitol or in between, with scattered settlements east of the Capitol, near the Navy Yard, and west of the White House, on the route to Georgetown. Wealthier residents maintained carriages and horses; what public transportation there was consisted of omnibuses.

Washington's residents lived in mansions, modest row houses and sometimes single-family houses, but most lived in boardinghouses. Some wealthier citizens had country estates as well as city houses. Cabinet officers, who were expected to entertain, often rented or owned large homes. The most fashionable location of the time was near the White House. St. John's Episcopal Church was erected in 1815 at the northeast corner of Sixteenth and H Streets, Northwest. The first house to be built facing Lafayette Park was Decatur House, in 1818. Its last occupant before the war was Louisiana senator Judah P. Benjamin, who resigned and headed south. During the war, Decatur House was used by the army. Other impressive houses soon joined Decatur House around the park; the neighborhood became known as Lafayette Square. The parish house for St. John's was built in 1836. Dolley Madison lived opposite Decatur House, at the corner of H Street and Madison Place, for the last dozen years of her life. A number of the houses around the square were demolished, but when the area was rebuilt in the mid- twentieth century, infill row houses helped re-create the residential nature of the square.

Many congressmen lived in either the hotels that lined Pennsylvania Avenue or boardinghouses. Apartment living had not really arrived. Most of the residences of Washington's Civil War citizens, particularly in the downtown area between the Capitol and the White House, have not survived. Only one of the homes of Lincoln's cabinet officers, Blair House, still exists. The Cutts/Madison House on the corner of Madison Place and H is another survivor of the old homes around Lafayette Park, as is 712 Jackson Place, the residence of Major Rathbone, who accompanied the Lincolns to Ford's Theater on the night of the assassination. Two small boardinghouses remain downtown due to their association with Lincoln's assassination. You can visit the Petersen House to see what the homes of ordinary Washingtonians were like. Mary Surratt's house on nearby H Street is now a Chinese restaurant. Clara Barton's wartime residence, a suite of rooms in a boardinghouse near her job at the Patent Office, has recently been rediscovered.

The outbreak of war in 1861 would bring many changes to this small, essentially Southern city. The Washington City Lincoln arrived in for his inauguration — or, for that matter, his sole congressional term — would be very different by the end of the war in 1865.

CHAPTER 2

The Lincoln Presidency And The Civil War Begin

1861

Lincoln Is Inaugurated And War Breaks Out

Security for Lincoln's March 4 inauguration was tight. The open carriage taking him and outgoing President Buchanan to the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremonies was heavily guarded, preceded by infantry, surrounded by cavalry and supervised by Elizabeth Lomax's son. Riflemen were on the rooftops along the route. At the Capitol, armed men were visible in windows and concealed below the inaugural platform on the east side of the Capitol. After the Inaugural Ball in a temporary structure behind city hall on Judiciary Square, Lincoln's challenges of trying to avoid war — and dealing with ambitious officer-seekers — began. Despite dire predictions, Abraham Lincoln was alive and in office.

Tensions in the city eased somewhat. Barely a month later, however, the dispute over Federal occupation of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor erupted into war when the Confederates opened fire on it on April 12. Major Robert Anderson was forced to surrender on April 13. After the attack, events unfolded rapidly. There was immediate renewed concern for the safety of the Union capital. A prime goal of the Confederates was the capture of Washington, with its resources, documents and symbolism. In mid-April, the capital was still situated between two of the largest — and un-seceded — slaveholding states, Maryland and Virginia with Delaware nearby. Within weeks, the commander in chief and his cabinet would be in charge of running what would become a long war, and Washington would be the center of administering and supporting the war effort. Great changes would come swiftly to the city in 1861.

The Executive Departments/Lincoln's Cabinet

At the behest of George Washington, two office buildings for executive departments were located within the area known as the President's Park rather than near the Capitol. After the British burned these small red-brick buildings in 1814, four similar ones were erected, two on each side of the White House. On the east side of the White House, on the Fifteenth Street side, were the State Department and the Treasury; on the west, along Seventeenth Street, were the War and Navy Departments. When war broke out, these key executive departments were concentrated here, all within easy walking distance. This would be the epicenter of the war effort. With the Treasury, State, War and Navy Departments next door, the White House functioned as Command Central for the war. Lincoln's office was on the second floor, and cabinet meetings were held there as well.

A lithograph with portraits of prospective candidates for the Republican nomination for president in 1860 gave William Seward of New York prominence. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois appears as a minor candidate, but he prevailed at the Chicago nominating convention. Many of these men would later play key roles in his administration. Lincoln assembled a strange group for his cabinet, including several of his opponents in the 1860 presidential campaign. Two chief rivals for the presidency were in critical posts at the beginning of the war.

The State Department was the oldest of the departments and therefore first in order of protocol. It had occupied a brick office building on the east side of the executive square since it moved to Washington. But with the growth of the Treasury, its days were numbered. It remained there, however, until after the war. It was demolished in 1866 for the north wing of the Treasury and moved to a temporary location. William Seward had expected to be the Republican nominee — and president. As secretary of state, he was the highest-ranking cabinet officer. He came into the administration thinking of himself as a de facto premier but soon learned not to underestimate Lincoln. In November 1861, he had to deal with an international diplomatic crisis when two Confederate envoys hoping for recognition from Europe were removed from the Trent, a British ship. Union officials, fearing a declaration of war from England, backed down, apologized and released the two. Seward ultimately became a great admirer and confidant of the president. He served the full eight years of the Lincoln and Johnson administrations. He lived about half a block away from his office, on the east side of Lafayette Square. Lincoln would visit there often.

Lincoln appointed Salmon P. Chase, another rival for the presidency, to be Secretary of the Treasury. His equally ambitious and entitled daughter served at his hostess since he was a widower. With Seward's wife rarely in Washington, the beautiful and charming Kate Chase held rank — and evoked great feelings of jealousy in Mrs. Lincoln. The Chases lived downtown, at Sixth and E, near Judiciary Square. Chase never got over wanting to be president; he always had one eye on the 1864 race. He frequently threatened to resign, and Lincoln held on to his letter of resignation, finally accepting it in 1864. He appointed Chase as chief justice of the Supreme Court shortly after the October 1864 death of Roger B. Taney, who had ruled in the Dred Scott decision. Chase would not only swear in Lincoln at his second inauguration in 1865 but also, weeks later, Andrew Johnson. He would also oversee Johnson's impeachment trial. He ran the Treasury well, under difficult circumstances. After Lincoln's death, the new President Johnson established a temporary office in the Treasury. Both Chase's office and Johnson's have been restored to their period appearance.

The Treasury is the only executive department still in its original location. The early nineteenth-century red-brick War and Navy Department buildings, the military center of the war effort, remained west of the White House, on Seventeenth Street, until being demolished for the huge State, War and Navy Building begun in 1871. These departments gradually left it for other larger, separate locations; the Second Empire building now serves as offices for the president.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "A Guide to Civil War Washington, D.C."
by .
Copyright © 2013 Lucinda Prout Janke.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Foreword Gary Thomas Scott 9

Preface 13

Acknowledgements 15

A Guide to Exploring Civil War Washington in the Twenty-First Century 17

Prologue: The Road to War 27

1 Lincoln's Capital City 33

The State of the Federal City 33

The Washingtonians 35

2 The Lincoln Presidency and the Civil War Begin: 1861 41

Lincoln Is Inaugurated and War Breaks Out 41

The Executive Departments/Lincoln's Cabinet 42

The Capital in Peril 46

The Battles Begin 53

3 The Wartime Capital: 1862-1864 59

Defending the Capital 60

The Progression of the War 64

The War Transforms the Capital and the Capitol 65

A Disaster and an Invasion 71

4 Coping with Casualties 75

Critical Condition: The Need for Hospitals 77

The War Ends Earlier for Some than Others 82

Civilian Relief Efforts 86

Dealing with So Much Death: The Bivouacs of the Dead 89

5 New Residents, New Demographics, a New City 91

Local Emancipation-and Compensation 93

The Emancipation Proclamation 93

The Establishment of Black Public Schools 95

A Floodtide of Refugees 95

The United States Colored Troops 96

Concern for the Refugees 99

Celebrations of Emancipation 100

A Changed City 101

6 The Final Year: 1865 103

Epilogue: Some lingering Legacies of the Civil War 113

Bibliography 117

Index 121

About the Author 125