President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldiers Home NW Washington (DC) July 2013 by Ron Cogswell
Visited often by President Lincoln and the First Lady, Lincoln’s Cottage has a very endearing history as the chosen place where the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was penned by Lincoln himself. It was written while he lived there seasonally from June to November between 1862 and 1864.
Also called the Soldier’s Home, this beloved abode served as a vacation home for several presidents, including Rutherford B. Hayes and James Buchanan, who used it as their Summer White House to escape the heat in Washington D.C. It was also visited by other notable figures in history, such as the poet Walt Whitman, who often saw President Lincoln there and nodded cordial greetings to the great man. In his 1876 book, Memoranda During the War, Whitman described President Lincoln, saying, “Mr. LINCOLN generally rides a good-sized easy-going gray horse, is dressed in plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty; wears a black stiff hat, and looks about as ordinary in attire, &c., as the commonest man...I saw very plainly the President's dark brown face, with the deep cut lines, the eyes, &c., always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression."
Lincoln’s Cottage is situated on the third highest spot in Washington D.C. and rests on more than 250 acres, making it a great place to visit while touring the nation’s capital.