BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Lincoln Cottage -- Visitor Center

DC -- Lincoln Cottage -- Visitor Center:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.16.81.94 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

[1] LINCOV_071106_01.JPG

[2]

LINCOV_071106_06.JPG

[3] LINCOV_071106_08.JPG

[4]

LINCOV_071106_11.JPG

[5]

LINCOV_071106_14.JPG

[6]

LINCOV_071106_17.JPG

[7]

LINCOV_071106_21.JPG

[8]

LINCOV_071106_24.JPG

[9] LINCOV_071106_29.JPG

[10]

LINCOV_071106_33.JPG

[11]

LINCOV_071106_34.JPG

[12]

LINCOV_071106_37.JPG

[13]

LINCOV_071106_41.JPG

[14] LINCOV_071106_42.JPG

[15] LINCOV_071106_47.JPG

[16] LINCOV_071106_52.JPG

[17] LINCOV_071106_55.JPG

[18] LINCOV_071106_61.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. LINCOV_071106_06.JPG: Retirement Home: Post-Civil War: During Lincoln's time, most Soldiers' Home residents were foreign-born, mainly Irish or German. Far from their families, these immigrant veterans of the War of 1812 or Mexican War needed institutional care. The influx of Civil War veterans reversed the ethnic mix and swelled the population. By 1890, more than 1,000 mostly native-born men were living here. The 20th century brought many changes to the Soldiers' Home, which was renamed the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home in 1947. The first women were admitted in the mid-1950s, and racial segregation officially ended in 1963. Renamed again in 2001, the Armed Forces Retirement Home continues to offer a retirement community to veterans who have served 20 years on active duty or were disabled while on active duty or due to wartime service. As of 2007, nearly 1,100 veterans were living here. Much of the funding has always come from the soldiers themselves, through monthly active duty payroll deductions of enlisted men and women.
2. LINCOV_071106_11.JPG: A Persuasive Leader: Abraham Lincoln's honesty and trustworthiness undergirded his effectiveness as a leader -- even his enemies conceded he was an honest man. A key to his persuasiveness was logic. He constantly sought occasions to make his case in writing, weighing his words carefully in order to define the terms of the debate. Lincoln persuaded by his generosity, his refusal to take offense, his insistence on bipartisan military and judicial appointments, his focus on the common cause, and his quick comprehension of his opponents' arguments and points of view. Lincoln's generous consideration and understanding of others, grounded in his own upbringing and rise in life, led him to defend the right to self-improvement for all, including those who were enslaved. And, finally, though he was not formally religious, a sense of the divine will upheld him as he strove to preserve the Union. Whether going to the front to consult with his generals or dropping in the War Department to read the latest telegrams from the front, Lincoln wanted to see for himself. When the Confederate general Jubal Early attacked the capital in 1864, Fort Stevens was unprepared. Government clerks and wounded soldiers were called to help until reinforcements arrived. Lincoln twice rode out to the fort, becoming the only president to put himself under fire during wartime. "[The President] is managing this war, the draft, foreign relations, and planning a reconstruction of the union, all at once. I never knew with what Tyrannous authority he rules the Cabinet, till now. The most important things he decides & there is no cavil, I am growing more and more firmly convinced that the good of the country absolutely demands that he should be kept where he is till this thing is over." -- John Hay to John Nicolay, August 7, 1863. ...
3. LINCOV_071106_14.JPG: Commander In Chief: Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington in February 1861 with a firm set of principles upon which he would govern. Some, however, saw him as untested and even ill equipped for the presidency. As the Union army suffered setbacks, popular support for the war flagged. Lincoln understood the power of politics and tried various approaches to rally the public and his troops to win the war. His dismissed generals from command until he found one who would carry the fight to the enemy. In an age before radio and television, he carefully worded his speeches, which were transcribed and widely reported in newspapers. He astutely timed his addresses to the public as he moved deliberately to link the end of slavery with the Union war effort. "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union." -- Abraham Lincoln, August 22, 1862. Choosing to regard the Union victory at Antietam in September as a "divine sign," Lincoln announced publicly he would proceed with emancipation -- a move that would ultimately bolster Union forces by authorizing free blacks and former slaves to enlist. But he was aghast as McClellan's failure to follow up the victory, even after the president traveled from the Soldiers' Home to urge his general to act. "I said I would remove him if he let Lee's army get away from him... He has got the slows." Shortly after the midterm elections, Lincoln fired McClellan.
4. LINCOV_071106_17.JPG: "If I could save the Union without freeing ANY slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing ALL the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery... I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do NOT believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do LESS whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do MORE whenever I believe doing more will help the cause." -- Abraham Lincoln, August 1862. Lincoln saw slavery as the root of the Southern rebellion -- but he proceeded carefully, partly to avoid alienating Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, where slavery was legal. He felt that these border states were critical to the success of the fragile Union coalition. Lincoln's personal antipathy to slavery changed little -- but his approach to ending it changed significantly. As the war dragged on during the summer of 1862, he began to view "the prospect of emancipation as a military tool for subduing the rebellion," since it would deprive the South of laborers and open a new pool of fighting men for the Union cause. Lincoln believed his only power to end slavery existing in the war powers of the commander in chief. Consequently, his early drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation and the final decree itself applied only to "all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state... in rebellion against the United States." Border states and areas under Union control were exempt. Lincoln fought to give emancipation the force of Constitutional law. In April 1864, when the House of Representatives at first failed to pass a proposed Thirteenth Amendment abolishing all slavery, the president insisted that passage of the amendment be added to the Republican party platform during his reelection campaign, and he turned his great political skill to persuading enough Democratic congressmen to join Republicans in passing it. The House passed it on January 31, 1865, and three-quarters of the state legislatures ratified it by December 6, 1865. The amendment guaranteed a permanent, legally binding end to slavery throughout the United States. 1861: August 6: Congress passes the First Confiscation Act, authorizing seizure of slaves employed in the Confederate states. August 30: General John C. Fremont issues an order to free slaves of Confederates in Missouri -- Lincoln cancels the order. 1862: April 16: Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, offering financial compensation to owners who pledge loyalty to the Union, and appropriating money for voluntary colonization of former slaves outside of the United States. Lincoln supports the measure. May 19: Lincoln cancels General David Hunter's order to free slaves in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. July 12: Reading from a carefully prepared paper, Lincoln urges congressmen from border states to embrace gradual compensated emancipation. July 17: Congress passes the Second Confiscation Act defining the rebels as traitors and ordering the confiscation of their property sixty days after a presidential "public proclamation and order." This act also declared rebel slaves "forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves." July 22: Lincoln reads the first draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Secretary of State Seward urges him to wait for a victory on the battlefield to issue it. September 17: The Union Army of the Potomac commanded by McClellan defeats Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Antietam, Maryland. September 22: The Second Confiscation Act's call for a presidential proclamation spurs Lincoln to act on the plan he has been formulating for many weeks. He issues the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation declaring that slaves in state in rebellion as of January 1, 1863 "shall forever be free." 1864: April 8: With Lincoln's support, the Senate passes a constitutional amendment calling for the immediate and uncompensated end of slavery across the country. When the House defeats it, Lincoln presses for its passage throughout 1864. July 18: Lincoln writes a general letter stating that his conditions for beginning any negotiations on ending the war include "the abandonment of slavery." 1865: January 31: The House of Representatives passes and sends the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to the state legislatures. The necessary three-quarters of the states ratify it within the year, ending slavery throughout the United States.
5. LINCOV_071106_21.JPG: A Quieter Place: What brought Abraham Lincoln to the Soldiers' Home? When the Lincolns first came to stay here in June 1862, they were mourning their son Willie. Mary was despondent and in her own words "in need of quiet." The president may have hoped for some relief from his grief and the stress of pressing the Union's war effort while calming political discord. As it turned out, the Soldiers' Home was not as far removed from the war and White House hubbub as Mary had hoped. Union troop tents dotted the grounds. Soldiers' graves multiplied in plain view. Favor seekers and casual visitors learned the route to the Lincolns' door. Nonetheless, the president found time here to concentrate on the war, to consider emancipation, and to sustain his vision of the nation. "When we are in sorrow, quiet is very necessary to us." -- Mary Todd Lincoln, May 29, 1862
6. LINCOV_071106_24.JPG: "My thoughts, my solicitude for this great country follow me where ever I go." -- Abraham Lincoln, August 19, 1864 The soldiers, generals, cabinet members, politicians, aides, friends, foreign visitors, and curious onlookers who met President Lincoln here at the Soldiers' Home witnessed him grappling with momentous issues. Here he confronted the devastating and drawn-out war, the question of emancipation, and his contentious campaign for reelection in 1864. But here he also indulged his love of storytelling and reading Shakespeare, the Bible, or the light works of contemporary humorists. Here he chatted with the soldiers who guarded him and the Soldiers' Home, took leisurely carriage rides with his wife, and played games with his youngest son. Reminders of the war were everywhere, especially in the newly dug graves visible from the cottage, but here the president also found lighter moments. The president enjoyed inviting guests to his "retreat" for relaxing social gatherings as well as politically discreet consultations away from White House scrutiny. Senator Orville Browning, a Republican from Illinois and a family friend of the Lincolns, notes in his diary many meetings in 1862 at the Soldiers' Home with social acquaintances, business leaders, and political figures. Lincoln's fondness for spending time at the Soldiers' Home may have reflected his lifelong desire to talk with and listen to ordinary people. When he encountered wounded soldiers on his commute to the White House and on visits to military hospitals, he could gauge the course of the war at the front, directly from those fighting it. By expressing his genuine interest in the views of his friends and opponents, Lincoln was often able to win over skeptics. But his accessibility also left him vulnerable to "seekers" who pursued him even in his Soldiers' Home parlor. Until 1862, the public could come and go freely on the Soldiers' Home grounds, but following the Union retreat after the second battle at Bull Run, a security detail was ordered for the president, and guards were assigned to control access to the area around the president's cottage at the Soldiers' Home. Even Secretary of War Stanton's family had to have a pass. The Stanton family also occupied a cottage here, at the invitation of the Soldiers' Home commissioners. Once a rival, Stanton became one of Lincoln's closest confidants. Both were also attentive fathers: Stanton indulged Tad almost as much as Lincoln did. "When only one or two were present, he was fond of reading aloud. He passed many of the summer evenings in this way when occupying his cottage at the Soldiers' Home. He would there read from Shakspere [sic] for hours with a single secretary for audience." -- Lincoln's secretary John Hay on the president's pastimes, 1890
7. LINCOV_071106_33.JPG: "We are truly delighted with this retreat. The drives & walks around here are delightful, & each day brings its visitors." -- Mary Todd Lincoln, July 26, 1862 Abraham Lincoln first rode out to see the Soldiers' Home a few days after his inauguration on March 4, 1861. Soon, a local newspaper reported that he and his family planned to summer at the Soldiers' Home. The outbreak of civil war and the unexpected Union defeat at Bull Run kept the commander in chief preoccupied in the White House the rest of 1861 -- but during the warmer months of the next three years, the president commuted to the White House from the Soldiers' Home. Lincoln made the Soldiers' Home his home for a total of thirteen months, roughly a quarter of his presidency. He was last seen riding the grounds in the afternoon of April 13, 1863, just one day before he was assassinated. By the time the Lincolns came to the Soldiers' Home in June 1862, their beloved son Willie had died. Four months earlier, he had succumbed to typhoid fever, probably from polluted drinking water. With thousands of Union troops encamped along the Potomac's banks, sewage fouled the river, which supplied water to the White House. Three miles to the north, the Soldiers' Home occupied the third highest spot in the capital. Its breezes offered a respite away from the unsanitary conditions and sweltering weather of the low-lying city. Ironically, a child's death had touched the Soldiers' Home before. The banker George W Riggs Jr had built the fashionable Gothic Revival cottage for his family on his country estate in 1842. Saddened by the death of his two-year-old daughter, he sold the property to the government in 1851. The White House, with presidential offices just down the hall from "private" rooms, offered little privacy. Even at the Soldiers' Home, government business intruded. To relax, Mary traveled often, taking Tad with her. She attended social gatherings, shopped, visited her son Robert, and wrote home frequently. Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926): Robert rarely came to the Soldiers' Home because he was a student at Harvard until 1864. He wished to enlist in the Union army, despite his mother's terror of losing another son. Finally, his father asked for General Grant's help. Grant made Robert a captain but kept him out of danger. William Wallace "Willie" Lincoln (1850-1862): Abraham Lincoln was a doting father who indulged his youngest sons, allowing them to roughhouse in his office. He was especially fond of eleven-year-old Willie, who he apparently felt was much like him. Thomas "Tad" Lincoln (1853-1871): Only nine when the Lincolns first arrived at the Soldiers' Home, and lonely without his brother and favorite playmate, Tad spent much of his time with the Soldiers' Home troops. They affectionately dubbed him "3rd Lieutenant Lincoln" and welcomed him to share their meals.
8. LINCOV_071106_34.JPG: Wartime Washington: The city that greeted the Lincolns was a study in contrasts, which grew as the war dragged on. A southern town, from which many Confederate sympathizers fled, it swelled with Union troops and a flood of northerners. Job seekers and businessmen, doctors and nurses, and abolitionists and ordinary citizens arrived, eager to join the war effort. A reverse migration brought southern deserters, spies, and runaway slaves. And from the battlefields of nearby Virginia and Maryland, wagons bearing the dead and wounded began to pour in. Washington also embodied the nation's most divisive contrast. Although a great majority of the black population living here was already free, the city still stood at the outset of the Civil War as the slaveholding capital of the mostly antislavery Union. This stark contradiction endured until Abraham Lincoln signed the congressional act ending slavery in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862, almost nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation. "If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign that we intend the Union shall go on." -- Abraham Lincoln, July 1863 A large Capitol dome, begun in 1835 and still unfinished in 1861, [???] war weary Washington after the federal government halted all non-war construction. In 1862, President Lincoln signaled his determination to preserve the Union by ordering work to resume. The dome was completed on December 3, 1863.
9. LINCOV_071106_37.JPG: A City Transformed: With most streets unpaved and many government buildings half-built, Washington in 1861 was ill prepared for the sudden chaos of war. Tens of thousands of soldiers, civilians, escaped slaves, and -- later -- newly emancipated men, women, and children flooded in. Tent Cities and Shantytowns: Wartime tripled the capital's population. In 1861 there were 50,000 people living in Washington City and 75,000 in the entire District of Columbia. By war's end, the count had ballooned to 200,000. The influx brought office seekers, patronage hunters, northern abolitionists, civilian suppliers for the Union war effort, prostitutes, and camp followers (wives, children, nurses, provisioners). Free blacks, "contrabands" (escaped slaves), and recently emancipated slaves came seeking a safe place to live a life of freedom. Newcomers scrambled to find in overcrowded tent cities and shantytowns, or in hastily built shacks lining the city's alleys. Camps and Quarters: Fewer than 500 troops guarded the nation's capital on New Year's Day in 1861, but within a week of the attack on Fort Sumter in mid-April, regiments from Pennsylvania and then Massachusetts and New York arrived. In this "instant" armed camp, Union troops pitched tents on the White House lawn and public squares and turned the Patent Office and other public buildings into military quarters. Civilians learned to live with drumming, bugling, and cannon fire, not to mention flourishing brothels. Hospitals and Cemeteries: Churches, hotels, schools, social halls, and even private homes became makeshift hospitals. The wounded lined the halls of the patent Office and Capitol. Thousands of unmarried northern women streamed into Washington to undertake the difficult work of nursing. On occasion, Mary Lincoln quietly made the rounds visiting the wounded in Union hospitals, several of which were near the White House. At the peak of the war, 50,000 ill and gravely injured soldiers filled 22 hospitals. The beleaguered living buried the dead quickly, with little ceremony, in local cemeteries or the first national cemeteries, located at the Soldiers' Home and then Arlington.
10. LINCOV_071106_41.JPG: Behind the Front Lines: Almost overnight, a sleepy southern town became the bustling hub of the northern war effort. The conflicts that sometimes flared openly on battlefields within earshot of the capital, simmered in Washington's parlors, hotels, and offices as Confederate sympathizers mingled with Union loyalists. Encircled by fortifications, Washingtonians braced for attack but went on with everyday life. For relatively provincial newcomers like the Lincolns, the city presented varied social, cultural, and commercial possibilities. Traveling companies of actors performed at Ford's, Grover's, Nixon's, and the National theaters. In the recently completed "Castle," the Smithsonian Institution presented lectures and exhibits. Twice weekly the Marine band performed on the Capitol's west terrace, while Willard's and other hotels held balls and "hops." In the sprawling stalls and sheds of the Center Market at 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, white and black vendors sold goods, fresh vegetables, and meats the complemented the wares of shopkeepers along surrounding streets. Nathaniel Hawthorne declared that the Willard Lobby "may be much more justly called the centre of Washington and the Union that either the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department. Everybody may be seen there... You exchange nods with governors of sovereign states, you elbow illustrious men, and tread of the toes of generals, you hear statesmen and orators speaking in their familiar tones. You are mixed up with office-seekers, wire-pullers, inventors, artists, poets, prosers, (including editors, army-correspondents, attaches of foreign journals, and long-winded talkers), clerks, diplomats, mail contractors, railway directors, until your own identify is lost among them."
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].