The Humble Cottage that Served as the Lincoln Family Home
The truly humbling thing about living in a place like Washington, D.C. is that the city is a living, breathing shrine to history. Monuments, memorials and museums scattered throughout the city tell stories of mere mortals that built a nation from ground up and of their triumphs and tragedies that hold significance centuries later. The museums that line Constitution Avenue house artifacts that bring history alive, the cherry trees that line the Tidal Basin are a living testament to the strength of the relationship between nations.
But every once in a while, no matter how long you’ve lived in the area, you come across a witness to history that somehow managed to remain off the beaten path. The Lincoln Cottage, a nondescript home on the grounds of a residence for military veterans, a few miles from the White House and the Capitol, is one such gem.
During some the most intense periods of his presidency, in the summers of 1862, ’63 and ’64, this cottage served as the Lincoln family home, and an escape from oppressive Washington summers and from the stranglehold of DC politics and society.
The cottage itself is a simple home — especially when compared to the surrounding stone structures (one of which looks like a castle) of the Armed Forces Retirement Home — with the usual complement of rooms in the upper and lower floors, and a porch.
What sets it apart from all those other monuments and memorials is that it is almost completely bare. Save for a few chairs and tables, the rooms are empty. And this, oddly enough, turns out to be Lincoln’s Cottage’s strength.
It allows your imagination to fill in the gaps and ease into the time Lincoln must have paced these rooms mulling over the war that gripped the country; or sat out on the porch with his breakfast looking on to the grassy expanse dotted with soldiers’ tents as his eyes settled on the horizon and on the Capitol that was being built; or received guests and favor-seekers who followed in his path when they found he’d left the White House for the cottage.
Much of the information about Lincoln’s time at the cottage is gleaned from the diaries of the soldiers who camped out in the field beyond the porch at the back of the house and from the personal notes of Lincoln’s visitors. The soldiers formed part of his security detail and wrote of what must have been mundane interactions for them then but now, they provide us with rich insights into daily life in the Lincoln household.
The President commuted daily on horseback between the cottage and the White House, sometimes all alone, and walked late into the night in the neighboring grounds and area regularly. In Lincoln’s Sanctuary, author Matthew Pinker quotes the poet Walt Whitman: “I see the President almost every day,” noted poet Walt Whitman in an entry from his wartime journal, dated Wednesday, August 12, 1863. “I saw him this morning about 8 ½ coming in to business.”
The knowledgeable tour guides at the cottage also paint a vivid picture of Lincoln’s thought process as he poured all his energies into the war and into the drafting and passage of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Those were tough times in the Lincoln White House and in the Lincoln household, as the family struggled to come to grips with the loss of a son and brother. The cottage, located as it was away from the center of all the action and at an elevation that provided succor from the muggy heat of the swampy area near the White House, was a welcome refuge.
It’s an eye-opener of a tour no matter what your age, but especially so for children who might be studying American Civil War history or the history of the Emancipation Proclamation. It allows one to see Lincoln as a human being, not just the occupier of the White House, who had bold ideas, faced incredible odds, but thought, talked and strategized his way to surmounting them.
Any history buff or Lincoln fan is fortunate indeed to have this portion of the President’s life preserved and restored to how it must have looked during his life there. Because of its size and non-official nature, the cottage seems to afford a much more personal connection to the man who just happened to be one of the most important thinkers and leaders of the country.
You too can visit this historical gem. Visit their website at http://lincolncottage.org/visit/plan-a-visit/ to plan a visit.