Lincoln's Citadel
The Civil War in Washington, DC
24 September 2013
Territory Rights — Worldwide.
Description
The stirring history of a president and a capital city on the front lines of war and freedom.
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.
Reviews
"When Lincoln became president, Washington was just emerging from its long tenure as a sleepy outpost of Southern proslavery domination of this professedly democratic nation. Kenneth Winkle eloquently chronicles the transformation of the capital wrought by the Civil War, when Washington became the nerve center of a huge war effort that in turn transformed the nation, freed four million slaves, and launched America on its course toward modernity." — James M. McPherson, author of War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861–1865
"Lincoln’s Citadel 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
"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
"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
Also By: Kenneth J. Winkle 
Study Guide: for Inventing America: A History of the United States, Second Edition
2, Paperback, 2006
The Study Guide contains chapter objectives and outlines, short-answer and essay questions, and chronologies that support students as they work through the text.
Study Guide: for Inventing America: A History of the United States, Second Edition
1, Paperback, 2006
The Study Guide contains chapter objectives and outlines, short-answer and essay questions, and chronologies that support students as they work through the text.
