EMANCIPATION DAY: TWO PLACES IN WASHINGTON, D.C. WHERE HISTORY WAS MADE

Although what we know today as the city of Washington, D.C. was little more than a rural and hilly region populated mostly around the waterfront in S.W. D.C. and Georgetown during the Revolutionary War, it was the focal point of America and the great struggle of the Civil War during the mid ninteenth century.



 The Civil War literally put D.C. on the map in ways that L'Enfant could never have imagined.  To be embroiled in a bitter debaucle over slavery threatening to rend the Union nearly 100 years after its birth.  Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were to reshaping the way Blacks and Whites viewed each other amidst the shellfire and smoke.  Black and White men were laying their lives down for an ideal of racial unity.

 Washington, D.C. was a modest and quiet town as compared to Baltimore, Philidelphia, New York and Boston which began to look much like great european metropolis'.  Washington, D.C. was closer to a small southern town with few grand buildings to grace its ambitious Parisian plan.  The city was replete with modest rowdwellings, warehouses and had a more pastoral feel with livestock grazing on the mall.  With the Civil War came more and more people, tenemants and barracks to house them, taverns, brothels and other retail establishments.  D.C may have been more like a frontier town at this time than a true metropolis... but it was a start.  It had been difficult selling parcels in a region plagued with a multitude of streams, ponds and swamps at a time when malaria and other maladies bourne by mosquitos and unclean were a common cause of mortality.  The modernization of Washington, D.C. was largely the work of Alexander Robey Shepherd better known as "Boss Shepherd" who paved the streets added gas street lights, horese drawn street cars and planted over 60,000 trees along Washington's many streets.  Boss Shephered is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery just across the street from the Lincoln Cottage.  Below is a picture of him when he was Governor of the Nations Capitol from 1873 to 1874.

Two edifices in mid ninteenth century Washington D.C. became the cradles both of Emancipation and it's legacy.  the first was what is called the Lincoln Cottage located in the Old Soldiers Home in N.W. Washington, D.C. just a few minutes from Howard university and The Catholic University of America, as the eagle flies...

The house is a victorian gothic revival domicile constructed in 1842 and shown below is the formal facade. It was purchased by the government to be an Eleemosynary institution for veteran soldiers.  It became the "Camp David" of the ninteenth century with its pastoral and exuberantly landscaped parterres.  During the Civil War it was virtually a country estate.  Howard University would grow up nearby around the late 1860's and Catholic University would open later in 1888.  The site was actually close to Ft. Stevens, the only site physically within the District that actual combat was seen. 

Lincolns summer cottage at the Old Soldiers Home

The second edifice of note is Frederick Douglass' second home in Washington, D.C. at Cedar Hill.  The house, originally built in 1855 was purchased by Frederick Douglas and financed through a bank of which he was then president called, "Freedom Savings and Trust".  The domicile is built in a victorian style that appears to be a fusion of neoclassical and gothic revival and charactaristic of many contemporary Maryland homes of the period especially on the eastern shore.  Frederick Douglas and his wife Anna Mary originally lived in a red brick and brownstone rowhouse on A. Street until the home was consumed in fire.  Frederick Douglass purchased the home called Cedar Hill when the developer and associated properties fell into in foreclosure.  The ill fated development of which Cedar Hill was the crowning glory exculded virtually all races and creeds a flaw no doubt integrally linked to it's financial failure. 

During the roughly 23 years of his life in Washington, D.C. Frederick Douglass was a constant agitator for civil rights.  The close network of abolitionists, sufferagists and temperance lobbyists he had galvanized during his long years of lecturing accross the country and in Europe were a testament to his universality.  Frederick Douglas had sought to work with whites as friends and allies in spite of the obvious prejudices he must have encountered.  Although he was close friends with John Brown he refused support of his violent insurrection at Harpers Ferry.  Long before Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglas preached racial unity, equality and peaceful but tenacious struggle for civil and other human rights from fields, courtyards, lecture halls, athenaem's, churches, synagogues and other places of public and private assembly from England to Maine.  Among some of Douglass' dearest associates were Soujourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Coffin Mott and a brilliant host of other mid ninteenth century luminaries who all held him in the highest of esteem. 

The two buildings, Lincolns Emancipation cottage and Douglasses were ironically built on two hills which are among the highest elevations in the city.  The next time I have the pleasure of looking out from the Portico of Cedar Hill or Lincolnn's cottage I will be sure to see if there is a clear sight line between the two...

Upper Left: A young and dapper Frederick Douglass around 1860      UpperRright: Abraham Lincoln with a smile so rarely seen.  this is believed to be the last living photograph of the president.    Upper Middle: John Brown renown abolitionist and father of the Harpers Ferry insurrection.   Lower Right: a wonderfully gentle picture of Lincoln dressed splendidly and seated in gentlemanly pose.