Wartime Washington illustrates the ways in which the city that greeted the Lincolns was a study in contrasts. A southern town, from which many Confederate sympathizers fled, it swelled with a flood of northerners eager to join the war effort. As the war dragged on, a reverse migration brought southern deserters, spies, and the newly emancipated. Washington also embodied the nation’s most divisive contrast as the slaveholding capital of the antislavery Union, until Abraham Lincoln signed the Congressional act ending slavery in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862. A short animated film in the exhibit brings to life the many people Lincoln encountered on his daily commute. Visitors will come away understanding the profound ways people changed the city and their destinies as a result of the war.
