The Lincoln Cottage Opens to the Public for the First Time

WASHINGTON — Abraham Lincoln was a commuter president.

For about a third of his time in office, he lived in a 34-room "cottage" on the grounds of a home for disabled soldiers about three miles north of the White House and made a daily 45-minute trip each way between his job and his family. Usually he rode on horseback. Occasionally he went by carriage.

"I see the president almost every day," wrote the poet Walt Whitman, who lived along Lincoln's route in the nation's capital during the Civil War.

"He looks even more careworn than usual, his face with deep cut lines, seams and his complexion gray through very dark skin — a curious looking man, very sad," Whitman wrote in his journal on Aug. 12, 1863.

A cavalry unit usually accompanied the commuter president but he delighted in avoiding this fuss and riding on his own.

Was this safe? After all, Lincoln was assassinated.

Well, a sniper shot at the president who was riding alone from the White House back to the cottage late one night in the summer of 1864. Lincoln spurred his horse home and his trademark stovepipe hat was found the next day with a bullet hole in it. And John Wilkes Booth, the actor who would assassinate Lincoln later at Ford's Theater, initially plotted to kidnap him during his commute.

The summer cottage where Lincoln lived from June through November nearly every year of his presidency "is one of the great undiscovered places in Washington," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

On Feb. 18, it will be opened to the public for the first time.

"It is the most significant Lincoln site in the country," said Moe, whose nonprofit preservationist group engineered the seven-year, $13 million restoration of the Gothic Revival house.

It was here that Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in the Confederacy, Moe said. Several bloody, historic years later, the re-elected Lincoln "was out here the day before he was assassinated" on April 14, 1865.

Yet many people who have lived and worked for years in Washington, D.C., are unaware of the historic house on the grounds of what is still the Armed Forces Retirement Home. Moe said he was first taken to the cottage by a friend in 1997.

As a historian, he believes that "this is the place that most evokes the spirit of Abraham Lincoln" — whose 199th birthday is celebrated Feb 12.

A High, Cool Place

The cottage was part of a complex built in 1842 by George W. Riggs, patriarch of a clan of bankers that established the Riggs Bank that flourished for more than a century in the nation's capital. The three-story house and surrounding buildings are located on one of the highest points in the District where a prevailing summer breeze and graceful shade trees keep the temperature six or seven degrees cooler than in downtown Washington.

A decade later, Riggs sold the site to the federal government to become a home for disabled military veterans who could not support themselves. It was called the Military Asylum or the Soldiers' Home. Cottages were set aside on the grounds as getaways for the president and secretary of war.

James Buchanan was the first commander-in-chief to take advantage of the shady hill. The bachelor president wrote to a niece that he "slept much better at the Asylum than at the White House."

On Inauguration Day in 1861, Buchanan told his successor, Abe Lincoln, about the cottage. First Lady Mary Lincoln visited the site two days after her husband was sworn into office. Lincoln looked over the cottage the next day. The family planned on spending that summer there but the Civil War interrupted. After the Union suffered a surprising loss at the Battle of Bull Run, Lincoln decided to stay at the White House and his family went to New Jersey for a vacation.

Willie Lincoln, the 12-year-old son of the president and first lady, died in the White House of what was probably typhoid fever in February of 1862. That June, the Lincoln family left the White House for the Soldier's Home cottage where they would stay until November. They followed this schedule for the remainder of Lincoln's presidency.

On the initial trip, they took 19 wagon-loads of furnishings, clothing, toys and other family belongings.

"This is where they grieved for the death of their son Willie who died in the White House," said Moe. And it got the family "out of the swamp that was then downtown Washington."

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and his family moved into another cottage on the grounds to make strategic planning easier. Each morning, Lincoln would rise early, eat breakfast at the cottage — often with government or military officials, and then ride to the White House, usually arriving by 8 a.m.

It was at the cottage that Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. The desk where he wrote it is in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House but a replica has been placed in a bedroom of the Lincoln Cottage.

Visitors — sometime strangers — would drop in on the First Family at the cottage.

In the summer of 1862, for instance, Union Army Col. Charles Scott showed up unannounced one evening to ask the president for special permission to search in Potomac River for the body of Scott's drowned wife. Because of the danger, the colonel had already been turned down by his commanders. Lincoln reacted with rare pique.

"Am I to have no rest?" the fatigued president angrily asked the visitor. "Is there no hour or spot where I might escape this constant call?"

He told Scott he should have gone to the War Office and the officer departed apologetically.

The following morning, Scott answered a knock on his room door at the Willard Hotel and opened it to find Lincoln there. "I was a brute last night," the president said. Apparently refreshed, he helped Scott cut through red tape so the officer could find the body of his wife.

The war itself sometimes raged dangerously close the Lincoln Cottage.

In July 10, 1864, the Lincoln family made a late night retreat to the White House when Confederate forces under Gen. Jubal Early defeated Union forces in Maryland and headed toward Washington, D.C. The rebel thrust ended at Fort Stevens, near the Maryland line, and the First Family returned to their summer home on July 14.

Burials on the grounds served as constant reminders of the human cost of the war. By the time the South surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, there were 5,000 graves of fallen union soldiers in what was a precursor to Arlington National Cemetery.

On April 13, 1865, Lincoln rode out the cottage at the Soldier's Home for an afternoon visit. The next night he was fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth.

Open to the Public

Presidents Johnson and Grant did not stay at the cottage. However, President Rutherford B. Hayes resided in the Lincoln Cottage for the summers of 1877 through 1880. President Chester A. Arthur stayed there in 1882 while the White House was being repaired.

For the past century or so, the cottage housed offices of the Armed Forces Retirement Home, where some career enlisted men and women of the armed services spend their final years. The home will continue this mission as the restored cottage is open to the public.

"Moving President Lincoln's Cottage out of the shadows and into the spotlight it deserves is one of the most exciting and rewarding things we've ever done," said Moe, the president of the National Trust For Historic Preservation.

All visitors will go through the cottage in small groups — about 16 people — with a tour guide. Admission will be $16 for adults and $5 for children. Reservations are recommended and can be made online at www.lincolncottage.org.