Houses of Civil War America

The Homes of Robert E. Lee, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, and Others Who Shaped the Era

Houses Civil War America of

H u g h H o wa r d

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original photography by

R o g e r S t r a u s III

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Contents Introduction

Pa rt I I

00

The War Years

Pa rt I A House Divided Against Itself

General Beauregard Visits the Edmondston-Alston House Charleston, South Carolina

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Memorial House Concord, Massachusetts

Robert E. Lee and

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Arlington House Arlington, Virginia

R a i l S t o p at R o k e by

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Ferrisburgh, Vermont

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Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson House

Joh n C . C a l ho u n ’s F ort

Lexington, Virginia

Hill

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Clemson, South Carolina

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Eldress Nancy Moore and South Union Shaker

C as s i u s C l ay ’s W h i t e H a l l

Village

Richmond, Kentucky

Auburn, Kentucky

00

00

Abraham Lincoln Home

Haller and Julia Nutt

Springfield, Illinois

at L o n g w o o d

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N at c h e z , M i s s i s s i p p i

00 John Brown Farm and G r av e s i t e

Mary Conrad Weeks Moore

Lake Placid, New York

and Shadows-on-the-Teche

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New Iberia, Louisiana

00

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P r e s i de n t L i nc ol n ’s

Pa rt I I I

C o t ta g e

Reconstruction and After

Washington, DC

00 F r e de r ic k D o u g l as s ’s

J e f f e r s o n D av i s a n d t h e

Cedar Hill

White House of the

Washington, DC

Confederacy

00

Richmond, Virginia

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Cl ara Barton House Glen Echo, Maryland

Horace Greeley House

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C h a p pa q ua , N e w Yor k

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U ly s s e s S . G r a n t C ot ta g e W i lton , N e w Yor k

General Sherman Occupies

00

the Green-Meldrim House S ava n n a h , G e o r g i a

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Harriet Beecher Stowe House Hartford, Connecticut

Willia m Henry Seward

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House Auburn, New York

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A l e xa n de r H . S t e p h e n s ’s Liberty Hall Crawfordville, Georgia

G e n e r a l s G r a n t a n d L e e at

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the Wilmer McLean House A p p o m at t o x C o u rt H o u s e , V i r g i n i a

00

J e f f e r s o n D av i s ’s B e a u v o i r Biloxi, Mississippi

00 Acknowledgments Further Reading

00 00

V i s i t o r I n f o r m at i o n

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Frederick Dougl ass’s Cedar Hill Washington, DC

“If there is no struggle there is no progress.

Those who profess freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”

Frederic k Do ugl ass

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“ P e r p e t u a l U n p a i d T o i l”

F

reddy learned a life-altering lesson from

abolition and abolitionist, gave him torment. “[Learning] had given

his wife knew no better than to educate

opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to

his master and mistress. Upon discovering the young slave, Hugh Auld reprimanded

Sophia Auld. To teach the enslaved the

me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It get out.” From this grew an unbreakable determination to be free.

After doing fieldwork on a Maryland plantation, serving hard

rudiments of “the A, B, C,” he warned, was unlawful and unwise.

time with a slave-breaker, and mastering the caulker’s trade in the

could spoil the best nigger in the world. . . . He would at once

as a sailor and escaped to the North. Discarding the name of his first

“A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master. . . . Learning

become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.”

Mrs. Auld took her husband’s directive to heart, and in the half

Baltimore shipyards, the young man, age twenty, disguised himself master (who may also have been his father), Frederick Augustus

Washington Bailey became Frederick Douglass of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he settled into the life of a freeman.

In August 1841, Douglass recounted the tale of his escape from

a dozen years that Freddy remained in her household, she did

slavery at an abolitionists’ meeting in Nantucket. Despite a halting

But neither Mr. nor Mrs. Auld understood the passion they

Garrison, one of the leading radicals of the day, proclaimed that

everything in her power to prevent him from learning his letters. inadvertently planted in the boy’s breast. The warning to his

mistress struck the slave child, he recalled later, with the power of a “new and special revelation.” The master’s “argument which he

so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn.”

In the years that followed, Frederick Bailey secretly mastered

reading and writing by means of stolen conversations with strangers, borrowed copybooks, and symbols deciphered at the

Auld shipyard. As if to fulfill Hugh Auld’s prophecy, the boy’s aborning literacy meant that meeting some new words, like viii

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start, Douglass told a story of unmistakable power. William Lloyd

Previous pages: The house dates from the late 1850s. Its builder, a real estate speculator named John Van Hook, moved into the rectangular brick structure during the Civil War. Previously known as Van Hook Hill, the property became Cedar Hill with Douglass’s arrival. The substantial porch that fronts the house, with fluted columns and a latticework frieze, offered a panoramic view of the city. As one 1892 visitor wrote, “The scene from the veranda . . . is magnificent, away over the city with its dazzling white dome and obelisk.”

A desk he purchased from the estate of Charles Sumner held a place of honor amid bookshelves in Douglass’s study that hold perhaps a thousand volumes. Though Douglass was very much a man of the mind, his daily ritual after breakfast involved taking a several-mile constitutional.

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J efferson D avis and the white house of the confederacy R ichmond , V irginia

“If my opinion is worth anything, you can always say that few people could have done better than Mr. Davis. I knew of none that could have done as well.�

General Robert E. Lee

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A riveting immersion in dayto-day life in the Civil War era, this groundbreaking book offers a unique perspective on the War between the States.

The dramatic story of the American Civil War unfolds in these pages as author Hugh Howard and photographer Roger Straus III lead us on a journey to the homes of the key players who shaped a new course for the nation—the politicians and generals, abolitionists and plantation owners, ordinary citizens and celebrated writers of the day. Through the prism of their lives we witness the buildup to four brutal years of armed conflict, visit key battlefields, and observe the transition to Reconstruction and beyond.

In showing us how influential Americans lived—the papers on their desks, the pictures on their walls, the slaves’ quarters and the grand parlors—Howard and Straus provide a new understanding of daily life during the Civil War. Combining powerful stories and gorgeous color photography, Houses of Civil War America offers a vivid reflection of a nation divided but, ultimately, reunited.

Hugh Howard is the author of Houses of the Presidents, Houses of

the Founding Fathers, and many other books on architecture, art, and American history. He lives in East Chatham, New York.

Roger Straus III ’s photography has been featured in several

books, including Houses of the Presidents and Houses of the Founding Fathers. He lives in North Salem, New York.

The featured sites include:

• Family dwellings, including Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois; Jefferson Davis’s Beauvoir in Biloxi, Mississippi; and William Henry Seward’s house in Auburn, New York • Houses of a government in transition, such as the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia; the Appomattox Court House in Virginia; and Lincoln’s summer escape at the Soldiers’ Home in Washington, D.C. • The dwellings of notable activists, such as the Clara Barton House in Glen Echo, Maryland; Frederick Douglass’s Cedar Hill in Washington, D.C.; John Brown’s humble farmhouse in Lake Placid, New York; and even a stop on the Underground Railroad, Rokeby, in Ferrisburgh,Vermont • Historic literary sites, including Ralph Waldo Emerson’s home in Concord, Massachusetts; Horace Greeley’s house in Chappaqua, New York; and the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in Hartford, Connecticut • Architectural statements, among them Robert E. Lee’s Arlington House in Virginia and the magnificent and haunting Longwood in Natchez, Mississippi, a cotton baron’s folly begun before the war—but never completed

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Marketing and Promotion National media campaign, including print and online interviews • Digital marketing/publicity campaign, including features and reviews, specialized blog outreach, and downloadable excerpts • Social network campaign, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Goodreads On-sale date: November 1, 2014 · History · Hardcover 978-0-316-22798-8 · $40.00 US / $44.00 CAN 10 x 11 · 264 pages · 200 4/c photographs and illustrations Ebook: 978-0-316-37634-1 · $19.99 US / $19.99 CAN This is uncorrected proof. Not for sale.

Little, Brown and Company littlebrown.com Copyright © 2014 by Hugh Howard. Original photography copyright © 2014 by Roger Straus III.

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