THE CIVIL WAR REVISITED

Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles, Union 3rd Army Corps commander, regularly visited his right leg. After losing it at Gettysburg, where it was amputated above the knee, he had it boxed and sent, with his compliments, for display at the new Army Medical Museum here. For years, on the anniversary of its loss, the general visited the museum to pay his respects to the limb.

The shattered bone is only one of several curiosities in the National Museum of Health and Medicine at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. My wife, Liet, and I made the museum a stop in June on a fascinating self-guided tour of Civil War Washington.

Washington lacks the battlefields of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, but it does have important Civil War sites of its own. There are the obvious ones, such as Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was shot, and the Petersen House across the street, where he died. But after those we were in for some surprises, including Lincoln’s summer “White House,” unknown even to most Washingtonians until President Clinton dedicated it as a national monument in July.

Our tour even took a personal turn when I uncovered at the National Archives the service and pension records of a great-uncle who had served as an infantryman during the war.

We had come to the National Museum of Health and Medicine on the city’s north side because of the permanent exhibit devoted to Civil War medical practices. Here we learned that although about 200,000 men were killed on the battlefield, double that number died of wounds and disease.

Reconstructive surgery was becoming more tolerable, thanks to the use of ether. Our hearts went out to one poor fellow whose face had been horribly torn in battle; the surgeon’s efforts, traced in drawings and two models of the patient’s head, did little to disguise the damage.

Moving from display case to display case containing everything from bone saws to specimens in alcohol, we were startled to find ourselves confronting the lead bullet that killed Lincoln, the long surgical probe used to extract it, fragments of the president’s skull, a lock of his hair cut from the wound site and a bloodstained cuff from his shirt.

The day before, we had been about five blocks east of the White House visiting Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, and the Petersen House. Standing on the theater stage and pointing to the flag-draped presidential balcony, a young National Park Service interpreter described, in chilling detail, the events of April 14, 1865. So vivid were her descriptions that, at the medical museum, we found ourselves examining the bullet and the sinuous probe with morbid intensity.

The fresh memory of the dim room of the Petersen House and the short bed in which Lincoln was placed (diagonally, to accommodate his 6-foot-4 frame) made these mementos of his final moments even more moving.

From the Petersen House, we could have waved down a taxi and gone a couple of miles east to the Library of Congress. A display there shows items removed from Lincoln’s pockets, including two pairs of spectacles, one set still bearing a piece of string the president had used to mend a hinge; a handkerchief with “A. Lincoln” embroidered in red thread; a leather wallet holding nine newspaper clippings, some praising his policies; and the puzzler, a Confederate $5 bill. We had seen these artifacts on a previous occasion. So from the Petersen House, we walked to the Surratt boardinghouse a few blocks away. Here Booth planned the assassination with John Surratt, the son of the boardinghouse owner Mary Surratt.

On the way, we passed the Greek-style Patent Office Building, now home to the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art, both closed for renovation. During the war, the Patent Office was a hospital, and among those who cared for the wounded were poet Walt Whitman and nurse Clara Barton, whom soldiers called “the angel of the battlefield.”

All around us, as part of the building boom and preservation fever of downtown, facades of old buildings were being shorn of signs, layers of paint and other modern improvements. When we reached the 1840s Surratt boardinghouse, we were amused to see it contained a Chinese restaurant, just one of many in Washington’s Chinatown.

In a walking mood, we continued on foot a couple of blocks to the Old City Hall, now a courthouse. A handsome Greek Revival structure dating from the 1820s, it also did duty as a temporary hospital. After Lincoln signed an 1862 bill eliminating slavery in Washington, former slaveholders came to City Hall to petition the government for compensation. About 3,000 claims were filed.

Two blocks away is the old Pension Office, today the National Building Museum. This amazing Italian Renaissance structure is wrapped with a narrow terra-cotta frieze 1,200 feet long. It beautifully depicts members of the Union’s infantry, artillery, cavalry, naval, quartermaster and medical corps on the march or at work.

Inside, 75-foot columns at either end soar toward the ceiling. The building was designed by Montgomery C. Meigs, the Union Army’s quartermaster. He envisioned the edifice not only as a grand place for veterans to visit but also as a memorial to the war dead, including his own son.

We also stopped to look at the interior of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where Lincoln worshiped. Though it has since been rebuilt, Lincoln’s pew is preserved in the sanctuary.

Nearby is the site of the Willard Hotel, where Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and their children stayed before his inauguration. The hotel was later torn down, rebuilt, closed for two decades and reopened in 1986 as the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel, with many original features restored. A copy of the Lincolns’ signed bill hangs in the hotel’s history gallery. The 10-day stay, meals included, was $773.75.

President Grant enjoyed stopping by the lobby of the Willard for a brandy and a cigar, but when word got out among influence peddlers that he was a regular, they began flocking to the lobby in such numbers that he called them “lobbyists.”

The next day, we shifted to a driving tour. Our first stop was the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Anacostia, a neighborhood in Southeast D.C. Here, Douglass’ beautiful 1850s house, Cedar Hill, stands high above Washington, with the Capitol dome rising in the distance.

The former slave who became an abolitionist leader, women’s rights advocate, orator, newspaper editor and author came to Cedar Hill with his first wife, Anna, when he was 60.

The 14-room house contains most of the original furnishings, including oil paintings, framed art prints and small white marble figures in Greek and Roman style. On a sideboard in the dining room, where the Douglasses often entertained, sits a copy of a silver tea set presented by Britain’s Queen Victoria.

A family man, Douglass added a seven-room wing to accommodate his 21 grandchildren and their parents, who visited regularly. When the house grew too busy for Douglass to concentrate, he retreated to the Growlery, a small stone cabin in the garden that the family likened to a lion’s den, where he read and wrote without distraction.

Driving on, we stopped at the 158-year-old Anderson Cottage, dedicated as the President Lincoln and Soldiers’ Home National Monument. The charming stucco and gingerbread-trimmed cottage, on the grounds of the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home, is only three miles north of the White House.

The breezy location on a hill drew the Lincoln family when it was hot. In the evening, after Lincoln finished his work at the executive mansion, he would come here on horseback, until a Confederate sharpshooter’s bullet knocked off his stovepipe hat. From then on, Lincoln arrived in a carriage in the company of guards.

He spent a fourth of his presidential years here. In an upstairs bedroom, he penned the final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Though tours of the interior are not yet offered, Liet and I were free to walk around the building, step into the Victorian latticework gazebo and push our way through the low-lying branches of a beech tree to stand in its all-encompassing shade. The National Trust for Historic Preservation plans to restore it and open it as a museum in three years.

On Harewood Road, not far from the cottage, is the Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery, among a dozen or so graveyards for Civil War soldiers established in the 1860s. We drove through its gates and stood silently on the roadway, absorbing the sight of row upon row of small tombstones, each numbered and bearing the name of a fallen soldier. It is a beautiful place of hillocks, old trees and forgotten lives.

Surrounded by slave states, D.C. lived in fear of attack by Confederates, and as a precaution, the government built 68 forts, more than 90 batteries and numerous embankments around the city. One of these, Ft. Stevens, two miles north of Anderson Cottage, was our next stop. Here the only Civil War battle in the District of Columbia took place on July 12, 1864.

These days, the grass-covered fort on a small rise is not much more than an oasis of green in a crowded residential neighborhood. But climbing onto the ramparts, I could imagine the scene, the cannons (two are still in place) firing on rebel sharpshooters hidden in scattered farmhouses, and the Blues and Grays skirmishing in the fields below. We paused at the spot where the president came under fire as he stood on the rampart, gazing at the action.

Outnumbered, the Southerners retreated; had they fought on and seized the fort, the South would have had the capital in its grasp.

Because our tour had done so much to rekindle my interest in the Civil War, I was determined to search for information about Great-Uncle David Brown, a private in the 35th New York, Company H. At the National Archives, on the north side of the Mall, anyone can do as I did and look up an ancestor who served in the war. I obtained Uncle David’s service and pension records--the original documents, yellowed with age.

I knew David was a bit of a reprobate. He left his bride-to-be waiting at the altar because he was too drunk to get to the church, a story long part of our family lore. Riffling through the documents, I learned that after being wounded in the thigh area by an exploding shell at the second Battle of Bull Run in Virginia and then staying for weeks in three D.C. hospitals, including the Patent Office, he was put in the guardhouse for intemperance and foul language.

The pension file, 52 pages thick, told me more. The wound not only affected his gait and back but also damaged nerves and left him without control of his bladder for life. He was discharged from the hospital and returned to upstate New York, “nervous and excitable,” incapable of manual labor.

Uncle David lived with his brother, Randall, my great-grandfather, for whom he performed chores in exchange for bed and board. The pension, when at last he received it after filing sworn affidavits of doctors and friends detailing his disabilities, was $8 a month.

Now, at last, I can understand why he abandoned his fiancee; he had no life to give. The wedding ring he intended for her turned up years after his death in the mud of the old barnyard.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK

Civil War Lore in Washington, D.C.

Getting there: From LAX, travelers can fly into one of three airports. To Ronald Reagan National Airport (across the Potomac from D.C.), nonstop service is on TWA; to Dulles International (about 30 miles west), nonstop service is on American and United and direct service (one stop, no plane change) is on Legend; to Baltimore-Washington International (about 35 miles north), nonstop service is on United and US Airways, and direct service is on Frontier and Southwest. Restricted round-trip fares to all airports begin at $358.

Getting around: Georgetown University offers two organized Civil War tours on the first Sunday of each month, from April through November. They depart from the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park Visitor Center, 1057 Thomas Jefferson St. S.W., Washington, DC 20007; telephone (202) 653-5190.

I put together my own tour using information from the D.C. Visitor Information Center in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.; tel. (202) DC-VISIT (328-4748), fax (202) 408-7956, Internet https://dcvisit.com. Possible sites include:

National Museum of Health and Medicine, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Ave. and Elder Street N.W., Building 54; tel. (202) 782-2200.

Ford’s Theatre, 511 10th St. N.W., and Petersen House, 516 10th St. N.W.; tel. (202) 426-6924.

Patent Office Building, now the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art, F Street between 7th and 9th streets N.W. Closed for renovation.

Surratt boardinghouse, now the Go-Los Restaurant, 604 H St. N.W.

Old City Hall, now a courthouse, on D Street N.W. between 4th and 5th streets.

Former Pension Office, now the National Building Museum, 401 F St. N.W.; tel. (202) 272-2448.

Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, 1411 W St. S.E.; tel. (202) 426-5961.

Anderson Cottage, recently renamed President Lincoln and Soldiers’ Home National Monument, off Rock Creek Church Road at Upshur Street N.W. Grounds open, buildings closed for restoration.

National Archives, 70 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.; tel. (202) 501-5205.

Where to stay: Willard Inter-Continental Hotel, 1401 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., 20004; tel. (800) 327-0200 or (202) 628-9100, fax (202) 637-7326, Internet https://www.washington.interconti.com. Doubles start at $455 a night.

Morison-Clark Inn, 1015 L St. N.W., 20001; tel. (202) 898-1200, Internet https://www.morrisonclark.com. I haven’t stayed here, but this antique-filled building looks wonderful and is praised in guidebooks. Double rooms start at $165 a night.

Dupont at the Circle, 1604 19th St. N.W., 20009; tel. (888) 412-0100 or (202) 332-5251, fax (202) 332-3244, Internet https://www.dupontatthecircle.com. A nice B&B; in a restored Victorian townhouse. Doubles start at $140 a night.

Where to eat: The Willard Room at the Willard Inter-Continental (contact information above) is a good bet for ambience, with oak paneling and 19th century decor.

1789 Restaurant, 1226 36th St. N.W.; local tel. 965-1789. Lavishly decorated restaurant with fine American cuisine, including lots of seafood. Entrees range from $22 to $36.

For more information: Washington, D.C., Convention and Visitors Assn., 1212 New York Ave. N.W., Suite 600, Washington, DC 20005-3992; tel. (202) 789-7000, fax (202) 789-7037, Internet https://www.washington.org.