Brownstein (If This House Could Talk)
compiles a detailed portrait of Lincoln's sojourns to the Soldiers' Home, a country residence on the grounds of a veterans' asylum three miles north of the White House, where he and his family spent several months a year from 1862 to 1864. This 160-year-old villa, declared a national monument in 2000, served as the Lincolns' refuge from Washington's oppressive summers, if not from a steady stream of visitors, the threat of Confederate kidnapping plots and the proximity of the Civil War battlefront. (They were "in hearing of cannonshot," Lincoln wrote.) Brownstein addresses familiar themes of the Lincoln presidency, including the solidity of his union with Mary Todd Lincoln. She also cites evidence for the site as the location of the drafting of the Emancipation Proclamation and chronicles both Lincoln's interactions with the free black household staff and escaped slaves housed in nearby camps. This laudatory account, commissioned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to help rescue the Lincoln Cottage from obscurity, is dense with excerpts from primary source material, if not with new ideas and analysis. Agent, Paul Mahon
. (Sept.)
