Where: Washington, D.C.
When: year-round
If you like: history
Why you should go: Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary, spent nearly a quarter of his presidency in a home on a bluff about three miles up from the White House. In this modest residence they’d escape Washington’s stinking, malarial summers and the stream of office seekers and blowhards who beleaguered the president downtown. Here in the relative quiet of the place now known simply as President Lincoln’s Cottage, surrounded by the nation’s first veterans home and cemetery, he drafted the Emancipation Proclamation. His method was to write bits of it on scraps of paper when ideas came to him, store them in his stovepipe hat, and turn them into drafts at a small desk in the cottage, a replica of which is on display in the bedroom. The cottage is also where the Lincolns withdrew in grief after the death of their eleven-year-old-son Willie, likely of typhoid. They were at the cottage the day before they went to see Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. The distinctly old-school tour today remains a relief from the heat and crowds downtown, and provides a fascinating, emotional view into the intimate life of America’s sixteenth president.
G&G tip: Don’t miss the exhibition Reflections on Grief and Loss on the first floor. A willow sculpture fills the room, each paper leaf carrying the name of and a message to a child who has recently died. It’s a moving coda to a visit to a place so suffused with the Lincolns’ own loss.
