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If you lived in Washington, DC, during America’s Civil War…

You would see

  • Tens of thousands of soldiers from the Union Army of the Potomac camped all around the city. The population of Washington, DC, in 1860 was about 63,000 people. The population reached nearly 200,000 people over the next four years.
  • The population increased when the soldiers began arriving in the capital city to prepare for war. The war also brought people who sold supplies and arms to the Federal Government. The Government needed more workers to handle the paperwork. Men were volunteering to fight for their country. So women began to work the office jobs that only men worked before the war. Many more people with various talents and hopes of making money from the war effort were drawn to Washington, DC from 1861 through the end of the war.
  • The soldiers arrived mostly by train at the old B&O Railroad Station in the city. They would step off the train cars and go into a building next door called the Soldiers Rest, where each soldier would receive a hot meal. Then the soldiers would move on to various camps in and around the city.

If you took a walk to the White House, you would see the statue of General Andrew Jackson sitting astride his warhorse Sam Patch, across the street in Lafayette Park. The statue, sculpted by Clark Mills, was dedicated in 1854 and still occupies the center of Lafayette Park today.

You might also see President Abraham Lincoln walking across the front lawn of the White House to the northwest corner, where the War Department building was located. The White House was the centerpiece on expansive grounds that included four other Government buildings. Looking out the front door of the White House, President Lincoln would have seen the War Department building on his left. The Navy Department building was located to the rear of the War Department. Looking right from his front door, President Lincoln would have seen the State Department building. The massive U.S. Treasury building was located to the rear of the State Department building. President Lincoln would walk over to the the War Department to read the current telegrams for the latest war news. He enjoyed talking with the telegraph operators and he sometimes shared meals with them. Mr. Lincoln would be easy to spot as he made his way across the lawn. He was the tallest American President, at 6'4". He would almost always travel alone. President Lincoln did not like being accompanied by an armed guard. The Secret Service that we know today did not exist at that time. After all, in Victorian Society no one would think of bringing harm to the President of the United States.

If you walked around to the back of the White House to view the Washington Monument, you would get a big surprise. In 1861 the Washington Monument was still under construction. In fact, construction had been halted. A war was being fought, and there was no money left in the fund to build the monument. The shaft was only 150 feet high. The monument today is 555 feet 5 1/8 inches high. The local citizens called the unfinished monument, "the stump."

You would also be surprised to see tens of thousands of cattle grazing around the monument. The cattle were kept on the mall to feed the Army. If during the Civil War you had walked over toward the area in Washington, DC, where the State Department now stands, you would have seen a cavalry remount depot, which had 10,000 horses.

If you looked east up the mall from the "Stump", in hopes of seeing the U.S. Capitol building, you would indeed see it, but you would once again be surprised. In 1861, the capitol dome was only halfway complete. The dome was completed in December, 1863.

You would hear

  • The music from the many military bands that accompanied their units to war. You could hear martial music almost all day and into the early evening from the many camps all around the city. The bands also played as soldiers marched in parades.
  • The city was surrounded by 68 protective forts. These forts had many cannon that were often fired in practice and in celebration of victories or holidays. The explosive sound from the cannon could break windowpanes in houses in the city.
  • The Army needed food and supplies. So there were always large amounts of wagons loaded with food and supplies on the move from the city out to camp locations. The heavily loaded wagons would creak and bump through the city at all times of the day and night. The horses and mules would pull their load with complaint, as the wagon drivers would urge them along with a loud chorus of curses.

You would smell

  • You would smell some 20,000 cattle, 10,000 horses, and 150,000 to 200,000 human beings living in and around a city built for 60,000 people. The smell, especially in the heat and humidity of a Washington, DC summer, was almost unbearable.

There was hardly any indoor plumbing, like the types we enjoy today, in Washington , DC in 1861. If you lived in a house, you would usually use, instead of a toilet, a bowl called a chamber pot. But most people had a small structure located out in back of their dwelling that was built over a hole called an outhouse. Some hotels had pipes that transported human waste outside to a vacant lot.

Human waste was called “night soil” in those days. Since there was no indoor plumbing, the night soil was usually dumped in the streets. The City Government would hire men to remove the waste. They would shovel the waste into a wagon and transport the waste to a dump beyond the city limits. If the men did not take care of the waste, the citizens usually relied on Mother Nature to wash the waste away with rain. There were some drains dug in streets that would flow down to the city canal.

In the 1830s the city invested in the Cumberland and Ohio, or C&O, Canal. The U.S. Congress helped the city invest in the canal, which started in Cumberland, Maryland, and ran over 75 miles southeast to Washington, DC, and Alexandria, Virginia.

The part of the canal that ended in Washington, DC, started in the area where the Kennedy Center is located. It followed the present-day path of Constitution Avenue up to where the Canadian Embassy currently stands. Then it cut south across the west side of the U.S. Capitol building and ended at what is today called the Anacostia River. The Anacostia was called the Eastern Branch during the Civil War. You can still see an original lock house that served the canal at the corner of 17th Street and Constitution Avenue.

The canal was a commercial investment that was supposed to bring money into the city. Farmers could bring their produce into the city by way of the canal. Unfortunately, the birth of the railroad made transporting goods by way of the canal obsolete (a way of the past). The Washington Canal turned into a stagnant waterway that the local citizens used to dispose of their garbage. One newspaper noted that the canal reportedly contained 71 different stinks.

There was a constant health threat from the canal. Swarms of mosquitoes lived in the stagnant waters. The waters also were the source of diseases such as malaria, cholera, and typhus. These diseases killed many citizens through the years.

You would touch:

You might come in contact daily with horses, milk-cows, chickens, pigs, ducks, or other animals such as your typical house pets.

  • You might sleep on a mattress stuffed with horsehair or straw. The mattress would lie across a wooden frame that had ropes or straps stretched across the supporting boards to secure the mattress above the floor. These straps would need to be tightened to keep the mattress from sagging. The mattresses would attract bed bugs. These were pests that would bite humans. So now you know where the old saying, “Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite,” comes from.
  • You would not take daily baths. You would most likely take weekly baths in cold water. Cold-water baths were considered a healthy way to bathe.
  • The worst part about living in Washington, DC, was that you could not close your windows to ward off the smell or the mosquitoes. There was no air conditioning in the summertime. Most citizens slept on their porches at night, if they had porches. Those with a higher income would leave the city for a more comfortable climate during the hotter summer months.
  • You would wear cotton clothes in warm weather and wool in cold weather. Boys wore pants or shortened pants at the knees called knickers. Girls wore dresses all of the time.

You would taste:

  • Washington, DC, was surrounded by farmlands. Several marketplaces could be located in the city. The largest marketplace was the Farmers Market, which was on Pennsylvania Avenue where the present day National Archives building is located. The market was a huge grocery area where farmers would sell their goods and citizens could purchase items such as fresh vegetables, meats, fish and other commodities.
  • If you couldn’t afford to shop at the market, you would fish in the Potomac or Eastern Branch Rivers. There was plenty of game in the area too. You could hunt deer or duck or grouse or pheasant. Some raised their own chickens and enjoyed fresh eggs. Some might also have their own milk-cow.
  • Freshwater was obtained from several communal wells in the city. But in 1862 work on a new aqueduct was completed, which brought water down from Great Falls, on the Potomac River, about 10 miles north of the city. The water was deposited in a new reservoir located just outside the neighboring city of Georgetown.