I am originally from Brooklyn, New York and I am not too intimidated by anyone or anything except this group right now. We're north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and this is the Robert E. Lee Civil War Round Table. I pulled into a spot outside right behind a van that said "send more Yankees, they're delicious", and I see men coming in here with weapons.

Basically I am going to talk about Civil War Washington and nobody today has really talked Civil War Washington. My buddy, Frank Cooling, did the forts of Washington. Joe Judge did his book, "The Confederate's Invasion of Washington". I am also a tour leader at the Smithsonian and I will be doing a tour on Jubal Earley coming into Washington D.C. I am also the historian at Historic Congressional Cemetery, which was the first national cemetery.

There aren't too many books on Washington at all and the books that are in existence will tell you "go to a site and in front of me or in front of you is a fifteen acre building and picture this", and I can't picture this when they talk about a subject. I have no idea what it looked so with that in mind I went around Washington D.C. and I list about 200 sites that are still in existence. Ed Bearss would say the American people want to get near the Civil War. They want to be able to touch it and feel and see it so with that in mind I did this book. So everything in this book is in existence, you can go there and touch it, feel it and see it. This is not going to be a Phd defense of a dissertation. We are going to have some fun tonight. We are going to be interactive. I am going to break a lot of myths and dispel a lot of things that you thought were true.

By the way, the word Hooker does not come from Joe Hooker. Basically, the women of Washington like in any army follow the men. So they were was known as Hooker's division but the term Hooker to talk about street walkers is not so. The term hooker was used in London in 1820's. So Joe Hooker had his division that he had to take care of but basically the term hooker was not named for him.

Let me take a minute or two to go over this map of Washington with you. The Washington D.C. that we know today was not the same Washington. It was a third rate city. It was a southern city and it was south of the Mason-Dixon Line contrary to what the southerners thought. It was a southern city and most of the people in Washington before the war it was known as "shown your colors" they wore cockades, red, white and blue for go USA and blue cockades for go red. They walked around the city until the hostilities got hot and Fort Sumpter was fired on, then all of a sudden southern sympathizers went south and everyone affiliated with the north came into Washington. Understand that Washington was basically a southern city. It was a third rate southern city. It did not compare with a Charleston. It did not compare with Savannah and it certainly did not compare with New Orleans. It was a very very dirty city. There was only one street in Washington that was paved and that was part of Pennsylvania Avenue. The south side of Pennsylvania Avenue was not the proper side of the Avenue. Proper women did not go there. The brothels were there, the gambling houses were there and the saloons were there. The north side was the proper side and the north side was where you had the so-called big hotels: the Willard, the Kirkwood, and the Metropolitan.

The city was wide open and some people were fortunate enough to stay in a hotel that had a water closet, which was a hospital chair with a pot underneath it. During my research, The National Telagenta, one of the major newspapers in Washington D.C., called the collection of stuffs that filled the buckets under the potty chair - night soil. Night soil was a very common word in war time Washington because night soil was taken and dumped into the lots. There was another tremendous sanitary problem in Washington D.C. and that was known as the Washington Canal.

It is in existence today and it is Constitution Avenue but it is paved over. The C & O Canal which was envisioned by George Washington was to open up the Ohio Valley. The farmers were building up their produce down near the C & O Canal into the Washington Canal. The big river in Washington was known as the Eastern Branch. The Washington Canal connected with C & O Canal. Unfortunately for the city of Washington in the 1840's, the B&O Railroad came into Baltimore so it negated the need for the farmers to get their produce and crops to Washington and instead it went to Baltimore and the canal became an open cesspool. The National Telagenta said that the canal was a receptacle of all abomination. They were able to identify 70 distinct stinks coming from the canal.

The proprietors of the hotels took the night soil and they threw the night soil in the canal. Cats, dogs, chickens, goats, pigs roamed the city and when they died, the sweepers of Washington picked up their carcasses and threw them into the canal. To add further to the misery of this, 75,000 troops came into Washington. Now understand something, this is before germ theory of medicine was known. The medical community did not know how diseases were caused. You had soldiers camped all over the city. Washington was a hot humid city, a lot of mosquitos there. It was a horrible place and some of the stuff I am going to show you will point that out to you.

I want to read something to you. Charles Dickens came to America in the 1840's and he wrote something called American Notes which were his observations of America. Here is an observation of Washington D.C. in 1842 but it still existed up until the time of the war. By the way, the population of Washington D.C. at the time of the war was only 60,000 people. The biggest deployer was the government. What branch of the government do you think employed all of these people? Postal Service. No, it was the Navy Yard. The Navy Yard had more than 2,000 employees working there. By the end of the war, 140,000 people lived in Washington. Charles Dickens writes "Spacious avenues that begin in nothing and lead no where. Streets miles long that only want houses and inhabitants. Other buildings that only need but a public to be complete. Ornaments of great battle pasts which only need great battle pasts to be ornaments. These were his leading features. One might fancy the season over and most of the houses ... to the admirers of cities, its a barberside feast, a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in. A monument raised for deceased not even a legible inscription to record its departed greatness such as it is it is likely to remain." For those of you who remember your classics, A Barberside Feast, remember Arabian Knights. Barberside was an alderman who served an imaginary feast to a beggar. So basically a barberside feast is something that is not there and that is a segway to my next quote.

In 1865 an anonymous englishmen wrote about Washington D.C., "the whole place looked run up in the night, like the cardboard city Pomtamkin village erected to gratify the eyes of a superior mistress on a tour through Russia and it is impossible to remove the impression that when Congress is over the place is taken down and packed till wanted again." Pomtamkin was a minister of state, and when Catherine the Great went through Russia in times of famine, Pomtamkin was a mile a head keeping the fat people in the front and she said "well, look how great things are". In other words, a barberside feast and Pomtamkin village are synonyms for things that are not there and this basically is Washington D.C.

You can date this slide by the dome of the Capitol being completed. It was completed by 1863. This is New Jersey Avenue. This is B&O Railroad station where most of the troops came into Washington via the station. This is the navy yard. This is the eastern branch or today the Anakosky River. This is the 11th Street Bridge. This is the navy yard bridge. This is the bridge that John Wilkes Booth and Davy Herald made their escapes over. This area over here at the time of the war was where Hadley Bowley Airforce base was located. This is from the Skeesborough Point and that is where Elmer Elsworth went across the Potomac to Alexandria to the Marshall House. It was the largest cavalry probably in North America.

When the conspirators and the alleged conspirators were captured, they were brought to the navy yard. They were put on monitors. Edward Stanton did not want to make any of these men and woman a martyr and what he originally intended to do was have them go to the penitentiary. This is Green Leaf Point. The penitentiary was right here and the arsenal was located right here. So basically the conspirators were held on the ironclads here and taken by boat around Green Leaf Point and came to the penitentiary. This is where they were hanged. He did not want anyone to see the conspirators.

This is the 7th Street wards over here, Carnealy and Jubal Earley's raid. A lot of hospital ships came along here. This building is still in existence. This was city hall and right behind city hall right here was where Abraham Lincoln had his First Inaugural called the White Muslim House of Aladdin. This was originally the only jail, and it was the only hospital, the E-Street Infirmary. This you can see is the receptacle of all abominations. This building here is the Smithsonian. That was James Redwood's building and it has been there since 1845. The Potomac River. One of the major economic centers of Washington was near 7th Street. There was the 7th Street Pike which was the major ingress and egress into Washington D.C.

Up here was St. Elizabeth's Hospital or also known at the time as the Governor Hospital for the insane. During the war many many men were stationed at the Government Insane Asylum. The Government Insane Asylum is where prothesis were made. During the war, doctors were known as saw bones. They cut off limbs that was the medical practice of the day. The mini ball would cut in, take pieces of clothing and dirt and basically within 24 hours infection would set in. So the prevailing medical tactic was to get rid of the infection and your chance for survival would be increased. So a lot of the men had limbs amputated and they were sent to the Government Insane Asylum. There was nothing wrong with them but they were embarrassed or ashamed to say "Dear Mom, I'm stationed at the Government Insane Asylum". The original tract of land given by Daniel Carroll of Carlton was the tract of St. Elizabeth's.

Early in the war, the group of men who received wounds who recuperated but weren't well enough to go back to the front line did guard duty. They proudly wore a pin that said IC on it which stood for Invalid Corps. These men very proudly walked around Washington D.C. showing off their invalid corps. Until as the war progressed and more and more government contractors sent inferior goods to the Quarter Master Department, Montgomery May developed a system where everything coming to the government was inspected. A lot of stuff came to the government, was inspected and if it wasn't fit for consumption or use, it was discarded. He and his quarter master corps developed a stamp that said IC which meant inspected condemned. Now all of a sudden lefty and gimpy are walking around here with an IC badge on and the front line soldiers would look at them and they would laugh. So basically as the war progressed, the Invalid Corps name was changed to the Veteran Reserve Corps.

There is something wrong with this, does some one want to guess? The Washington Monument, it wasn't completed. It only reached the 155' mark and the wig wags. This was the Potomac River and you can see the Potomac River and right next to it was the C&O Canal. Stuff would be barged down C&O Canal and it would come through the town of Hamburg. It would come into the canal over here. This was known as the Potomac Flats over here. During the Civil War the Potomac River was a lot wider than it is today. Those of you who are familiar with Washington on 17th Street and Constitutional Avenue there's a lockkeeper's house and people wonder what is a lockkeeper's house doing in the middle of the city. Well, at the time the western terminals of Washington were the Washington Monument and the lockkeeper's house. There was one lot coming into the canal. This building is still in existence. This is the Naval Observatory on 23rd Street. G.W. University is right along here. This is where Matthew Murray the pathfinder of the seas charted the oceans and the heavens. This is the Treasury Department. This is before the north extension of the Treasury Department.

Do you know how big the army was at the outbreak of the war? 16,000. It was very very small. Before the war Washington was not a big world power. We did not need a very big State Department. Here is the White House. Pennsylvania Avenue is over here. This is New York Avenue that cuts in right here. This church is still in existence. This is New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. One of the few copies of the Emancipation Proclamation that are still in existence are at the New York Ave Presbyterian Church.

This is known as Teddy Roosevelt Island today but during the war it was known as Mason's Island. This is where a lot of black recruits were kept until they were allowed to come into the army in 1863. They didn't get any money, they didn't get any pension but as soon as they became official members of the army, they were given guns. Walt Whitman commented that all of a sudden they didn't get so many cat calls from the citizens in the street. But just to keep everything kosher and safe, the blacks were midwacked on Mason's Island. This was the Aquaduct Bridge. This was Montgomery May's masterpiece. Today it is the Key Bridge. It was a double decker bridge. The upper level was a water flume similiar to the flume at Great Adventure. The top level was where the barges were able to come down the canal and go over the top level and go down to Alexandria and the bottom level was a pedestrian walkway. Once the war started, the government drained the top level and the took every other board out of the bridge. We were afraid of Confederate raiders.

This area is Georgetown. One of the very dangerous areas is right to the left of the Washington Monument. That today is the mall area but it was known during the war as the Island and soldiers didn't walk there. It was not a very safe area. Today it's safe.

This was taken from across the River. This is again the eastern branch. This area was known as Union Town. If you had a penny for every town in American that changed its name to Union Town during the war, you would be a very wealthy man or woman. This is looking across the Anakosy River. This is the Navy Yard over here. This is the largest ship barn in the world and Thomas Jefferson had a lot to do with the design of it. I put this in there to show you the geography people think that Washington D.C. was flat. It's not. It's very very hilly. We're south looking north. This is the Capitol. You can see that the extensions were not on yet so this is circa 1820's-1840's. But you can see to the north of the city how hilly the land was. This is the long bridge or the 14th Street Bridge. Way back here in the distance is the Aquaduct Bridge. This is a closer look at the Aquaduct Bridge and the C&O Canal. You can see a barge over here. This is Teddy Roosevelt Island. Right in here you can see St. Elizabeth's Hospital to the south. This was taken from the point where Georgetown University is today where the Union hospital was located. This is where Louisa May Alcott served.

Those of you who know Washington D.C. might be surprised at this building. This is the lockkeeper's house on 17th Street and Constitution Avenue. You can see the mud. You look at some of the old directories of Washington D.C. during the war and there are many display adds for baud wax. If you didn't work for the government you became a baud waxer. The newspaper described people trying to cross the street to go six feet they would have to go five blocks out of the way because in the winter time the mud and the ice. People would have to go all the way around.

Philip Barton Key was a very prominent lawyer and the story goes that Theresa would sit in the window waiting for Philip Barton Key to go by. Philip Barton Key would walk past the house and wave a white handkerchief. If Terry wanted to see Philip Barton Key and the coast was clear would wave a handkerchief back and they would get together. Dan Sickles finds out about this. So, he's there one day sitting behind the curtain. Philip Barton Key walked by and waves his handkerchief. Dan's arm comes out from behind the curtain and waves the handkerchief back. Philip Barton Key walks up the steps, knocks on the door and Dan Sickles is sitting there with a revolver in his hand. Philip Barton Key turns around, runs diagonally across Lafayette Park heading for the Wigwam. Dan Sickles is in hot pursuit. He stops, shoots and wounds Philip Barton Key. Philip Barton Key is lying on the ground pleading for his life. Sickles says "you disgraced my name" and takes very careful aim and killed him. That was the biggest scandal probably in America at the time in 1858. By the way, Dan Sickles is tried for murder do you know who is lawyer was? The first time actually it was used, temporary insanity, and Dan walks.

This is Dan the man. What did Philip Barton Key look like? This is the son of Francis Scott Key. This is Philip Barton Key. Let me show you a picture Terry. Do you think this woman is worth dying over? That is Terry. By the way right after the trial Dan forgives her and then divorces her. Terry went back to England and she disappeared from American consciousness and psyche. This is Dan Sickles' wife. She is a very beautiful woman.

This is an interesting picture. This is Arlington Cemetery. This is the Custis Lee Estate. The area right over here is where John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy are interred. Those of you who have been to Arlington Cemetery and have been to the Kennedy grave sites as you are walking up there, there is a big oak tree on the right side. That is this tree right over here. Still there and it's the oldest tree in the cemetery. Robert Kennedy is buried over here. It is very difficult to see on this but on the original picture, there are shadows of stumps of trees. It was a lot more heavily wooded. When Irwin McDowdell's troops came up the mansion over here, they cut down all of the trees for firewood. By the way, here's another piece of trivia, Did you know that Robert E. Lee was related to George and Martha Washington. You know that, let's go onto the next picture.

This is early Civil War. When was Arlington Cemetery opened? Officially May 13, 1864 before that Montgomery May being the quarter master's general was responsible for finding cemetery lands. There was one cemetery and that became filled. It is the Soldier's and Airmen's Home Cemetery on North Capitol Street. That cemetery became filled and new land was needed so Edward Stanton asked Montgomery May to find new land. Without giving it any thought he and Robert E. Lee were in West Point together but as soon as Robert E. Lee resigned his commission, Montgomery May had almost a pathological hatred for the man and the same day that Stanton tells May to find new land, Mays writes back to Stanton that he found a place. There was no E-Mail at the time so this was set up before. They used Robert E. Lee's estate. Mrs. Lee lived here after Robert E. Lee went south.

Winfield Scott asked Robert E. Lee to take command of the Union Army and Robert E. Lee did not want to go to war and he did not want Virginia to secede. When Virginia seceded after Fort Sumter, Robert E. Lee resigned his commission. With that Lincoln sent troops in. You can see the height. It's pretty high up there and Lincoln was afraid that the Confederates would put guns up on the Ridge line here and just shell Washington D.C. Irwin McDowell's troops went up. Mrs. Lee thought that she was safe because she was the granddaughter of George and Martha Washington. Her father was George Washington Parke Custer's grandson. But Mrs. Lee was told at this point that she better leave. Montgomery May in a fit of hatred took fourteen Union soldiers and buried them right next to the house in Mrs. Lee's rose garden with the hope that the fourteen dead Union soldier's would prevent the Lee's from ever coming back and it worked and they never did come back there.

So when you go to Arlington keep in mind the date May 13, 1864 in your mind and when you look at some of the old graves there you will see that some of the people were buried before that. These people were already dead, they were disinterred and taken to Arlington and reinterred.

Also, it is very important for historians to try to get pictures that get into the minds and bodies of the people of the day to see what happened there. To try to understand why people did things the way they did. This is Fords Theater and you can see the bunting. This is the Star Saloon. Peter Tarterball, the owner, served Boothe a drink of whiskey ten minutes before Boothe went inside and did his dastardly deed. Tarterball is also buried here at Congressional Cemetery.

I know that I have wondered why was Abraham Lincoln taken across the street after he was shot. Why was he put in the back bedroom of a house? It's a rhetorical question I don't want to engage in discussion with this right now. I came across a picture that is a very rare picture. Take a look at this picture. Fords Theater is over here. Look at the street. Look at the undulations. A man has a head wound, the last thing you want to do is put a man with a head wound in a carriage on a street that has a lot of ups and downs in it. See this building over here. Today this building is the Hard Rock Cafe but during the war it was George Washington's University Medical School and they performed an autopsy on the top floor here through the natural light of the sky light. To me it would seem very sensible that rather than going right across the street they should have made a left turn and taken Abraham Lincoln to George Washington University Medical School. This is before the war.

There were two brothers who lived in the Peterson House. They were the Elkie brothers. One of the Elkie brother's right after Abraham Lincoln died on April 15th came in and photographed what the room looked like. This is the room. This is the doorway you come in. This was taken probably about fifteen minutes after the body of Abraham Lincoln was taken out. The stool, the chair over here is where Barnes was sitting, Stanton was sitting over here. Here is the picture I was telling you about. A little bit different than what the room actually looked like. By the way, this is Robert Tarwegan. To the best of my knowledge, Robert Tarwegan was not there and neither was Andrew Johnson. A lot of these people might have been in and out of the room during the night. This again was in Harper's Weekly and the caption on this was Lincoln's Death and it shows everyone being here. This is Mrs. Lincoln who definitely was not in the room. She came in twice and Stanton ordered her out. Stanton ordered her out because doctors are involved in a life saving procedure and it was not a good idea to have a hysterical woman in there. So you need to get the woman out so you can do what you have to with the patient, not because he hated Mrs. Lincoln or anything of the sort. Again, Mrs. Lincoln was not in the room.

Okay, you guys think you are so smart. Now let's play for money. I will tell you the man's name if you tell me what he did. The man's name is James Tanner. I am surely humbled. That's correct. Basically, James Tanner was a double amputee at Second Bull Run. He learned Pitman Shorthand and he happened to be visiting just by a quirk one of the other houses down the block. The military governor of the District of Columbia, C.C. Auger, was told to go out and find somebody to take the notes. History knows what happened because of James Tanner. Do you know where James Tanner is buried? Arlington Cemetery. It's because of James Tanner that we know what actually took place during the night. There's a little controversy about what Edward Stanton said when Abraham Lincoln died. According to a lot of historians the famous quote "now he belongs to the ages". Tanner said Stanton didn't say that, but "now he belongs to the angels", and people have written tomes on that.

This does not stand anymore but during the war this was known as the Old Brick Capitol. You might remember your American History when the British burned the city of Washington in 1814. Congress was very ambulatory, moving from city to city and after the Capitol was burned the business leaders were afraid that Congress was going to pick up and move again. So what they did at their own expense, they built a building and it was known as the Brick Capitol from 1814 to 1819 Congress met in this building. By the time the Civil War rolled around it was an old building and was used as a prison. In the courtyard Henry Werz was hanged and I have some interesting photos to show you about this. This is East Capitol Street and this is First Street right over here. Again, look at the mud. The streets are not paved.

There was only one person was ever indicted. There were 600,000 Americans that died during the conflict, only one person was ever indicted and that was Henry Werz. There were a lot of charges that Henry Werz was indicted on when he wasn't even present in Andersonville. I think Henry Werz got a raw deal. Henry Werz was Swiss, he spoke a foreign language. This room still exists at the Capitol, it is the U.S. Court of Claims and this is Henry Werz here. Henry Werz was reclining on the couch because he was ill. The public saw that and they said that "SOB" he doesn't care about it, he's lying down, he's taking it easy.

This is an Alexander Gardner photo. This is the hanging of Henry Werz. There were soldiers in the trees and when Werz was brought up there he was jeered "remember Andersonville". Werz had his right arm in a sling up until the time he was executed. After the war, there were pictures taken of the autopsy and there were three sets of photos and Edward Stanton didn't want the American public to see at all. One was at the inquest of John Wilkes Booth aboard the monitor of the Montaw. None of the pictures to anyone's knowledge are existence. The next set of photos he didn't want anyone to have, but one did sneak through was showing Abraham Lincoln dead and that was taken in New York in City Hall. The third set of pictures were any pictures of Henry Werz's death. We have one right here. This picture did get by. By the way, Alexander Gardner was the first photo journalist and I think he understood the importance of keeping these pictures. This was right after his execution. You see Henry Werz on the table. You see his right arm.

This is also an Alexander Gardner photo. This was of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural. During the Civil War days, presidents took their oath of office in March. This picture was originally credited to Brady. Gardner threw this picture out because you can see the podium over here, and you see the thumb print so Gardner threw this photo out. See this man in the top hat over here, that's John Wilkes Boothe. Boothe commented in his diary that if he had a gun there... but even more remarkable than that look at the bottom. This is the east front of the Capitol it is the side that faces Supreme Court. This man right here is John Serat, Mary's son, Powell Payne, Ed Spangler, George Serat and this is my buddy Davy Herald. I'm saying that because Davy Herald is buried in Congressional Cemetery. For a long time there was discussion that was Lincoln being stalked. Originally, John Wilkes Booth was supposed to be on Lincoln's ride to the Solider's Home and was going to kidnap him and take him to Richmond and exchange him for soldiers but then it turned into something a lot worse than that. But historians for many years argued "was Lincoln stalked"? It just seem coincidental that at Lincoln's Inaugural everyone was within 100 feet of Abraham Lincoln. This is a close-up.

In my humble opinion, the government, Edward Stanton, wanted this man. They didn't want Mary Serat. She had a boarding house well okay she told lies, she said that she didn't know Powell. There was gun hidden in her house but basically was not worth dying for. I think Stanton wanted John Serat and like a good son, his mother is accused of murder, sentenced to hang and I think this was done to bring John Serat out. John Serat left. He left his mother. Do you know where John Serat was found? He was a papal zouave. The chase was on and he was captured in Alexandria, Egypt. He was brought back on a ship and 1867 came to the Navy Yard and he was put on trial and at that time it was inconclusive and John Serat walked free but basically the government wanted him. I don't think they really wanted Mary. Here is another close-up of all the people here.

This is also a rare photo. When I showed you the picture of the map and I said that the prisoners were taken from the Navy yard and they were taken around the point, meaning the penitentiary. This was the penitentiary. By the time the Civil War came around, the penitentiary was not in use. It was a penitentiary from the 1820's. People did hard time there. The government allocated seven cents a day for food. You could not talk there. This was a place where Edward Stanton decided the conspirators were going to be put. We are looking north. The Potomac River would be over here and the Capitol would be over here. There's the penitentiary. This was a shoe factory were inmates in the later years manufactured shoes. On the second floor is where Alexander Gardner set up his photo looking back east this way. This was taken from the arsenal which is further out on the point. You can really see the crowd which was not that big. The Potomac River was right here. A lot of tall masted ships sailed right along side and a lot of people climbed to the top of the mast to try to look over to see the execution.

This is Mary Surrat. This is Louis Powell. This is Davy Herald and this is George Serat. Winfield Scott Hancock was in charge of the hanging and everyone thought that Mary Serat was going to be hanged up until the last minute. Everyone came to see this man right here, Louis Powell.

* Steve Forman is the author of a book on Civil War Washington