headscratcher4
16th January 2009, 11:35 AM
A friend of my family wrote this to President Elect Obama. I thought some here might find it interesting...and possibly moving:
A Letter to the President-Elect: Mr. Lincoln’s Presence Still Lingers Along Pennsylvania Avenue
Dear President-Elect Obama,
While your election clearly evokes the memory of Abraham Lincoln, you may not be aware of just how much his presence still lingers along your inauguration route.
As your motorcade descends from Capitol Hill onto Pennsylvania Avenue after your inauguration lunch, cast a fleeting glance behind at the Capitol. This magnificent building, begun in 1793, was largely constructed by free and enslaved blacks. Lincoln insisted that, despite labor and material shortages during the Civil War, work on the massive new dome be continued. Symbolizing the nation’s reunification, the dome was finished in time for Lincoln’s second inauguration. The Statute of Freedom atop the dome was cast, assembled, and transported by a black slave, Phillip Reid.
Continue down Pennsylvania Avenue, the presidential route to the White House since 1801, to the corner of 3rd Street. Here in 1861 stood the St. Charles Hotel, which advertized “roomy underground cells for confining slaves” while their masters dined and slept upstairs in elegance.
On the rise to your right, between 4th and 5th Streets, is the Old City Hall, begun in 1820. This handsome Greek Revival building, was the first public structure erected for D.C. government’s use. Here on April 16, 1862, President Lincoln offered “compensated emancipation” to D.C. slaveholders for their human property—nine months before his (uncompensated) Emancipation Proclamation was to take effect in the Confederacy. The statue of Lincoln in front of the building was the first public memorial to the slain president (paid for largely by D.C. residents), and was erected in 1868 on the third anniversary of his assassination.
As the corner of 7th Street comes into view, look to your left past the National Archives, the site of the Center Market slave auctions (until 1850), and down 7th toward the Potomac River, where the old wharves were located. There, thousands of union troops embarked for McClellan’s ill-fated Peninsula Campaign; and thousands more, often horribly wounded, returned from a seemingly endless series of bloody battles in Virginia to be carried to the nearby hospitals.
Reverse your gaze and follow 8th Street up to your right, three short blocks, to the Old Patent Office (where Lincoln actually had a patent on file—for a “camel” to lift Mississippi River boats over its sandy shoals.) In this lovely building, modeled on the Parthenon, Walt Whitman and Clara Barton tended the sick and dying soldiers who were laid out between the patent-display cases. Lincoln, too, came many times to offer comfort. And he came, probably for the last time, in March 1865 with his wife to greet 4000 guests in the re-fitted Grand Hall at his Second Inaugural Ball.
Before returning to Pennsylvania Avenue, let your mind linger a block south of the Patent Office, on 7th Street, to which in 1851 the new offices of the abolitionist press, the National Era, had re-located. There it began to serialize Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by the then unknown Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lincoln would later remark upon meeting her, “So, you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.”
Around the corner, in the rear of what was then 625-627 Pennsylvania Avenue, you can still see where the photographic studios of Mathew Brady were located-- on the top floor, facing the north light.
Now, back on Pennsylvania Avenue, look to your right up 10th Street. You can just glimpse the red brick Ford’s Theater. Behind it is the same alley, leading to F Street on which Booth fled. The hard-to-see house directly across from Ford’s on 10th is the Petersen House, where the mortally wounded Lincoln was taken from the theater and laid out diagonally to die on a bed too small for his large frame. His grief-stricken Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, said at the bedside, “Now he belongs to the ages”.
The Willard Hotel comes up quickly on the right, at 14th Street. Not the same Willard as in Lincoln’s day; but there has been a Willard on that site since about 1850. Here Julia Ward Howe composed the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic in 1861. Lincoln stayed at the hotel for 10 days before his inauguration. Three years later, a battle-worn Ulysses S. Grant, accompanied only by his 13 year old son, checked in, newly arrived from the West to take command of all the Union Armies. He initially went unrecognized until a harried front desk clerk looked down at the registration book and read simply “U.S. Grant and son, Galena, Ill”.
Turning the corner from Pennsylvania into 15th Street, look over your left shoulder at the statue of William Tecumseh Sherman, in front of the Treasury building, facing south, of course. Sherman critically turned the tide in favor of Lincoln’s 1864 re-election (against the democratic candidate General McClellan) by capturing Atlanta that September. But, he is also remembered as responsible for denying black Union troops the right to march down Pennsylvania Avenue along with their white comrades in arms in the glorious two-day Victory Parade in May, 1865.
So, Mr. President-Elect, welcome back to Washington. Your beloved Mr. Lincoln is smiling as you proudly traverse the route denied to his black veterans. And, this time you will come down Pennsylvania Avenue as the new Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Lincoln’s rightful successor, and as the president of one nation, indivisible.
Sincerely,
Tersh Boasberg, Chair of the District of Columbia Historic Preservation Review Board
A Letter to the President-Elect: Mr. Lincoln’s Presence Still Lingers Along Pennsylvania Avenue
Dear President-Elect Obama,
While your election clearly evokes the memory of Abraham Lincoln, you may not be aware of just how much his presence still lingers along your inauguration route.
As your motorcade descends from Capitol Hill onto Pennsylvania Avenue after your inauguration lunch, cast a fleeting glance behind at the Capitol. This magnificent building, begun in 1793, was largely constructed by free and enslaved blacks. Lincoln insisted that, despite labor and material shortages during the Civil War, work on the massive new dome be continued. Symbolizing the nation’s reunification, the dome was finished in time for Lincoln’s second inauguration. The Statute of Freedom atop the dome was cast, assembled, and transported by a black slave, Phillip Reid.
Continue down Pennsylvania Avenue, the presidential route to the White House since 1801, to the corner of 3rd Street. Here in 1861 stood the St. Charles Hotel, which advertized “roomy underground cells for confining slaves” while their masters dined and slept upstairs in elegance.
On the rise to your right, between 4th and 5th Streets, is the Old City Hall, begun in 1820. This handsome Greek Revival building, was the first public structure erected for D.C. government’s use. Here on April 16, 1862, President Lincoln offered “compensated emancipation” to D.C. slaveholders for their human property—nine months before his (uncompensated) Emancipation Proclamation was to take effect in the Confederacy. The statue of Lincoln in front of the building was the first public memorial to the slain president (paid for largely by D.C. residents), and was erected in 1868 on the third anniversary of his assassination.
As the corner of 7th Street comes into view, look to your left past the National Archives, the site of the Center Market slave auctions (until 1850), and down 7th toward the Potomac River, where the old wharves were located. There, thousands of union troops embarked for McClellan’s ill-fated Peninsula Campaign; and thousands more, often horribly wounded, returned from a seemingly endless series of bloody battles in Virginia to be carried to the nearby hospitals.
Reverse your gaze and follow 8th Street up to your right, three short blocks, to the Old Patent Office (where Lincoln actually had a patent on file—for a “camel” to lift Mississippi River boats over its sandy shoals.) In this lovely building, modeled on the Parthenon, Walt Whitman and Clara Barton tended the sick and dying soldiers who were laid out between the patent-display cases. Lincoln, too, came many times to offer comfort. And he came, probably for the last time, in March 1865 with his wife to greet 4000 guests in the re-fitted Grand Hall at his Second Inaugural Ball.
Before returning to Pennsylvania Avenue, let your mind linger a block south of the Patent Office, on 7th Street, to which in 1851 the new offices of the abolitionist press, the National Era, had re-located. There it began to serialize Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by the then unknown Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lincoln would later remark upon meeting her, “So, you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.”
Around the corner, in the rear of what was then 625-627 Pennsylvania Avenue, you can still see where the photographic studios of Mathew Brady were located-- on the top floor, facing the north light.
Now, back on Pennsylvania Avenue, look to your right up 10th Street. You can just glimpse the red brick Ford’s Theater. Behind it is the same alley, leading to F Street on which Booth fled. The hard-to-see house directly across from Ford’s on 10th is the Petersen House, where the mortally wounded Lincoln was taken from the theater and laid out diagonally to die on a bed too small for his large frame. His grief-stricken Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, said at the bedside, “Now he belongs to the ages”.
The Willard Hotel comes up quickly on the right, at 14th Street. Not the same Willard as in Lincoln’s day; but there has been a Willard on that site since about 1850. Here Julia Ward Howe composed the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic in 1861. Lincoln stayed at the hotel for 10 days before his inauguration. Three years later, a battle-worn Ulysses S. Grant, accompanied only by his 13 year old son, checked in, newly arrived from the West to take command of all the Union Armies. He initially went unrecognized until a harried front desk clerk looked down at the registration book and read simply “U.S. Grant and son, Galena, Ill”.
Turning the corner from Pennsylvania into 15th Street, look over your left shoulder at the statue of William Tecumseh Sherman, in front of the Treasury building, facing south, of course. Sherman critically turned the tide in favor of Lincoln’s 1864 re-election (against the democratic candidate General McClellan) by capturing Atlanta that September. But, he is also remembered as responsible for denying black Union troops the right to march down Pennsylvania Avenue along with their white comrades in arms in the glorious two-day Victory Parade in May, 1865.
So, Mr. President-Elect, welcome back to Washington. Your beloved Mr. Lincoln is smiling as you proudly traverse the route denied to his black veterans. And, this time you will come down Pennsylvania Avenue as the new Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Lincoln’s rightful successor, and as the president of one nation, indivisible.
Sincerely,
Tersh Boasberg, Chair of the District of Columbia Historic Preservation Review Board