Lincoln's citadel : the Civil War in Washington, DC

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Title:

Lincoln's citadel : the Civil War in Washington, DC

Author:

Winkle, Kenneth J.

ISBN:

9780393081558

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xvi, 486 pages, 16 pages of unnumbered plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm

Contents:

"Abolition house" -- "Getting the hang of the house": Congressman Abraham Lincoln -- "At war with Washington": the abolitionists -- "A western free state man": Lincoln and slavery -- "Is the center nothing?": Lincoln's middle ground -- "Cleaning the devil out of Washington" -- "A wide spread and powerful conspiracy": warnings and threats from Washington -- "The way we skulked into this city": claiming the presidency -- "This big White House": the Lincoln family -- "White and black, all mixed up together": the African American community -- "A swift and terrible retribution": striking the first blows -- "Order out of confusion": preparing for war -- "I was slow to adopt the strong measures": loyalty and disloyalty -- "If I were only a boy I'd march off tomorrow": the tide of sick and wounded -- "An unknown something called freedom" -- "Tinkering experiments": toward emancipation -- "Freedom triumphant in war and peace": emancipation in Washington -- "We must use what tools we have": toward total war -- "On the soil where they were born": the former slaves -- "The step which, at once, shortens the war": the Emancipation Proclamation -- "Defend what is our own": the limits of freedom -- "Never forget what they did here": honoring the fallen -- "Worth more than a victory in the field": the end in sight -- Epilogue: "The country was ready to say amen".

Personal Subject:

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.

Geographic Term:

Washington (D.C.) -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865.

Summary:

Describes the Civil War from Abraham Lincoln's point of view in Washington, D.C., chronicling how the president supported fugitive slaves and also personally comforted wounded troops during wartime.

Holds:

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	975.302 WIN	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In the late 1840s, Representative Abraham Lincoln resided at Mrs. Sprigg's boardinghouse on Capitol Hill. Known as Abolition House, Mrs. Sprigg's hosted lively dinner-table debates of antislavery politics by the congressional boarders. The unusually rapid turnover in the enslaved staff suggested that there were frequent escapes north to freedom from Abolition House, likely a cog in the underground railroad. These early years in Washington proved formative for Lincoln.

In 1861, now in the White House, Lincoln could gaze out his office window and see the Confederate flag flying across the Potomac. Washington, DC, sat on the front lines of the Civil War. Vulnerable and insecure, the capital was rife with Confederate sympathizers. On the crossroads of slavery and freedom, the city was a refuge for thousands of contraband and fugitive slaves. The Lincoln administration took strict measures to tighten security and established camps to provide food, shelter, and medical care for contrabands. In 1863, a Freedman's Village rose on the grounds of the Lee estate, where the Confederate flag once flew.

The president and Mrs. Lincoln personally comforted the wounded troops who flooded wartime Washington. In 1862, Lincoln spent July 4 riding in a train of ambulances carrying casualties from the Peninsula Campaign to Washington hospitals. He saluted the "One-Legged Brigade" assembled outside the White House as "orators," their wounds eloquent expressions of sacrifice and dedication. The administration built more than one hundred military hospitals to care for Union casualties.

These are among the unforgettable scenes in Lincoln's Citadel, a fresh, absorbing narrative history of Lincoln's leadership in Civil War Washington. Here is the vivid story of how the Lincoln administration met the immense challenges the war posed to the city, transforming a vulnerable capital into a bastion for the Union.

Author Notes

Kenneth J. Winkle , acclaimed Lincoln biographer and Civil War historian, is Thomas C. Sorensen Professor of American History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The Young Eagle, his volume on Lincoln's rise, is the standard account.

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Though one might assume the man atop the eponymous citadel would get the most attention, the newest from Lincoln biographer Winkle (The Young Eagle) is really about the nation's capital-how it weathered and changed during the Civil War-and the citizens, slaves, and soldiers who lived in and moved through it. He describes his account as an "interior history" of Washington, D.C.-a phrase borrowed from Walt Whitman, from when the poet was in the city to find his brother George, who had been wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg-and that description is right on the money. Beginning with a portrait of the city before the war, Winkle examines the capital's conflicted relationship with slavery, as well as the political implications of its unique geographical location-it's not quite the North, and it's not quite the South. When the Civil War finally starts, Winkle hits his stride, describing a community far more divided and dangerous than most people today can appreciate. Far from being a unified bastion of antislavery pols, the capital was plagued with interior troubles and threatened by encroaching Rebel forces. Well-researched and thoroughly engaging, Winkle's history is a welcome addition to a body of Civil War literature that too often privileges men and massacres. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

A skillful portrait of the nation's capital as microcosm of a nation divided. When newly elected President Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, D.C., writes Winkle (History/Univ. of Nebraska; Abraham and Mary Lincoln, 2011, etc.), he came to a city that had a strong reputation as what one British abolitionist called "the chief seat of the American slave-trade." Indeed, slavery persisted there even when Lincoln took office, and when, in December 1861, a Massachusetts congressman proposed its abolition, the debate dragged on for months as "opponents raised a sweep of objections." The Confederacy, well aware that slave owners and sympathizers were abundant in the capital, longed to seize Washington; by the end of the war, under Lincoln's orders, it was probably the most heavily fortified city in the world, ringed by dozens of forts and artillery emplacements--and even so, the target of Rebel forays. Lincoln's experiment in siege craft did not have to be applied to other cities, but he tested other innovations there, including the suspension of habeas corpus and the use of federal troops to maintain order. Moreover, Winkle notes in a particularly timely passage, concerns for Lincoln's safety were so pressing that federal officials embarked on a secret, not strictly legal program of spying on presumed opponents, potential assassins and other conspirators. Lincoln's years in the city coincided, necessarily, with the establishment of the great national cemetery at Arlington and other hallowed sites in the capital, while he himself established certain protocols, such as visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals, in which he might have laid eyes on Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman. By the end of the war, Lincoln and his lieutenants had converted Washington from a sleepy Southern town into one that was "increasingly northern in outlook and character." A deep-reaching study of a city in wartime, which Washingtonians and visitors, to say nothing of students of the Civil War, will find to be of great interest.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

During the Civil War, Washington, D.C., was a boomtown. Against the distant sound of cannon fire, the city multiplied in size as various groups of people flowed in. Office seekers, military casualties, and escaping slaves lent the city a turbulent wartime sociology that Winkle probes. First, however, he depicts antebellum Washington during Abraham Lincoln's 1847-49 term in Congress. Recounting Lincoln's and fellow antislavery politicians' encounters with the peculiar institution, Winkle underscores the complicated legal conditions imposed on blacks, free and enslaved. He carries the legal scaffolding of D.C. slavery into the war years, when Congress abolished it by gradations, and details each step's ramifications on Washington's blacks and whites. Lincoln's personal and political part in these proceedings does not dominate but rather supplements Winkle's narratives of people drawn into the city as battle casualties or fugitives from slavery. His anecdotes of individual cases usefully illustrate his deployment of statistics about hospitals and refugee camps. Reminiscent of Margaret Leech's classic Reveille in Washington (1941), Winkle's history modernizes a story ever attractive to Civil War readers.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist

Choice Review

There have been a number of excellent books on Abraham Lincoln's presidency in recent years, but Winkle (Univ. of Nebraska) offers a new view of the drama, intrigue, and politics that swirled around the president during the crucial years of the Civil War. The author explores the role the nation's capital and its residents played in the course of the war, providing a variety of perspectives on a conflict that touched and changed all who lived there. Washington was ground zero for the abolitionist movement, front row for the war in Virginia, and a hotbed of debate and history-making decisions. But it was also a place where real people lived their lives in tumultuous times, and Winkle's examination of the various groups inhabiting the city demonstrates how the war changed the US in both momentous and subtle ways. Famous names (such as Fredrick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and Clara Barton) take their place in the cast of wartime Washingtonians, but Winkler also brings to light the triumphs and tragedies of unknown Americans. The author's prose is both informative and entertaining, making the book one of the best recent Civil War histories. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. S. J. Ramold Eastern Michigan University

Library Journal Review

Winkle (history, Univ. of Nebraska; The Young Eagle), a noted Lincoln biographer, keeps Lincoln and his administration center stage here. This is not a brick-and-mortar study of Civil War Washington, DC, as experienced by its average citizens but rather a description of political and military life in the U.S. capital from Lincoln's term in the House of Representatives (1847-49) to the end of the Civil War. Winkle's discussion of the future president's life in Washington during the 1840s makes for an engaging introduction. Moving forward, he offers plenty of details and statistics-on everything from the size of herds of horses in the capital to wages for contraband slaves-demonstrating his impressive research; the results may be overwhelming for anyone with only a passing interest in the Civil War. Still, with his absorbing narrative style, Winkle makes an extraordinary amount of information reasonably accessible, and Lincoln and the city's political context prove the backbone of this book. The extensive notes section will aid serious readers. (Index not seen.) VERDICT This well-written volume, with its distinctive perspective on America's Civil War president, will appeal to anyone with a background in Civil War history.-Sara Miller, Atlanta (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Preface	p. xi
Maps	p. xvii
Part I "Abolition House"
1 "Getting the Hang of the House": Congressman Abraham Lincoln	p. 3
2 "At War with Washington": The Abolitionists	p. 14
3 "A Western Free State Man": Lincoln and Slavery	p. 28
4 "Is the Center Nothing?": Lincoln's Middle Ground	p. 46
Part II "Cleaning the Devil Out of Washington"
5 "A Wide Spread and Powerful Conspiracy": Warnings and Threats from Washington	p. 71
6 "The Way We Skulked into This City": Claiming the Presidency	p. 91
7 "This Big White House": The Lincoln Family	p. 111
8 "White and Black, All Mixed Up Together": The African American Community	p. 127
9 "A Swift and Terrible Retribution": Striking the First Blows	p. 142
10 "Order out of Confusion": Preparing for War	p. 165
11 "I Was Slow to Adopt the Strong Measures": Loyalty and Disloyalty	p. 186
12 "If I Were Only a Boy I'd March Off Tomorrow": The Tide of Sick and Wounded	p. 213
Part III "An Unknown Something Called Freedom"
13 "Tinkering Experiments": Toward Emancipation	p. 231
14 "Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace": Emancipation in Washington	p. 250
15 "We Must Use What Tools We Haveö: Toward Total War	p. 280
16 "On the Soil Where They Were Born": The Former Slaves	p. 301
17 "The Step Which, at Once, Shortens the War": The Emancipation Proclamation	p. 318
18 "Defend What Is Our Own": The Limits of Freedom	p. 342
19 "Never Forget What They Did Here": Honoring the Fallen	p. 356
20 "Worth More than a Victory in the Field": The End in sight	p. 382
Epilogue: "The Country Was Ready to Say Amen"	p. 403
Acknowledgments	p. 415
Notes	p. 417
Index	p. 465

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Booklist Review

Choice Review

Library Journal Review

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