Overview

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.

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Reviews

Eloquently chronicles the transformation of the capital wrought by the Civil War. --James M. McPherson, author of War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861 1865

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. -- Publishers Weekly Eloquently chronicles the transformation of the capital wrought by the Civil War. -- James M. McPherson, author of War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 Kenneth Winkle has earned a reputation for original research, expert interpretation, and crackerjack storytelling, and all these attributes are on full display in Lincoln's Citadel. This is an invaluable addition to the Lincoln bookshelf. -- Harold Holzer, chairman, Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, and author of Lincoln President-Elect A marvelous book-and a must-read! -- Jay Winik, author of April 1865 A skillful portrait of the nation's capital as microcosm of a nation divided. 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 -- Kirkus Reviews Sets a new standard for research and insight into wartime Washington. Kenneth Winkle has taken the political intrigue of the nation's besieged capital and turned it into the setting for a remarkable series of human stories about the ordinary men and women who rallied to help President Lincoln save the Union. -- Matthew Pinsker, author of Lincoln's Sanctuary

Sets a new standard for research and insight into wartime Washington. Kenneth Winkle has taken the political intrigue of the nation s besieged capital and turned it into the setting for a remarkable series of human stories about the ordinary men and women who rallied to help President Lincoln save the Union. --Matthew Pinsker, author of Lincoln s Sanctuary

Author Information

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.

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