I probably don't need to tell very many of you this, but it is cold here. We had several inches of snow dumped on us this past weekend, followed by two days of single-digit temperatures, and they're predicting an extremely bad snowstorm for this coming weekend too. I'm already expecting to call out of work on Sunday, since as of right now the snow is projected to start sometime Saturday night and not stop until sometime on Monday. Currently my plans for the event involve soup, cats, computer games, and maybe a little crafting - basically not a whole lot of movement.
For now, though, let's visit a different winter. This blog post is going to be on the relatively short side, because I'm not finding a great many sources about it, but it's nevertheless very interesting and worth examining. While he was on his way to be inaugurated as President in 1861, the great Abraham Lincoln had a stop in our capital city and gave two speeches - one short, one longer.
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| The marker stands in front of the Dauphin Building, at Second and Market Streets |
Okay, enough of trying to sound like Sophia from The Golden Girls, I'll never be that cool. Anyway, the Lincolns arrived at the railroad station at the intersection of Vine and Second Streets at about 1:30 in the afternoon of February 22nd. They were accompanied by a military escort, who protected the family as they made their way to a fairly new (and therefore quite modern) local hotel known as the Jones House.
The Jones House deserves a little mention of its own. It kind-of-sort-of has a 'George Washington slept here' honor, although he was never in the building since it was constructed in 1853. When he was in Harrisburg in October 1794, he stayed in a log cabin-style hotel; the name of the building at that time doesn't seem to have been recorded, but afterward it was renamed the Washington Inn to pay tribute to the fact that he had been there. At some point over the next fifty years it was demolished and replaced with the Jones House. I actually have a picture of it, although I didn't know this at the time - when I wrote my blog post last year about Harrisburg's Market Square, I included a postcard of the area at the time that Lincoln visited. The Jones House is the red building in the left distance on the postcard, beyond the market stalls.
Anyway, the First Family-elect made their way to the Jones House. It wasn't far from the rail station; as I said, that was at the intersection of Second and Vine Streets, and the Jones House was at the intersection of Second and Market, on the spot where the Dauphin County Administration Building stands today. As was typical when Lincoln went pretty much anywhere, a crowd had gathered to see him. Man of the people that he was, he consented to stand on the hotel's portico (basically a fancy front porch involving a roof supported by columns) and deliver a short speech. He spoke of the military escort who had guarded his family, praising them as "the finest military array, I think, that I have ever seen," and regretting only that they were almost certainly going to be sent into war before very much more time had passed. Yeah, he knew what was coming. He then promised the people that he was going to do whatever he could to preserve peace, so long as doing so didn't contradict "the maintenance of the institutions of the country." He summed up his feelings thus:
With my consent, or without my great displeasure, this country shall never witness the shedding of one drop of blood in fraternal strife.
Of course, history knows all too well that his efforts to maintain peace didn't succeed, but it was a noble effort.
Speech concluded, Lincoln returned to the Jones House, where he was greeted with the news that there was a credible threat of an assassin in the city. His aides therefore had to alter his schedule, which had previously included spending the night at the Jones House. With the new plan in place, Lincoln proceeded to his dinner engagement as the guest of Governor Andrew Curtin, though he declined the governor's offer to stay at his home overnight. Instead, he went back to the hotel to say good night to his wife and sons, and then slipped out under cover of darkness with his military guard, who took him to a more obscure railroad station (history doesn't seem to have recorded which one) and put him on an 11:00 p.m. train to Washington. Any assassin who had hoped to intercept the President-elect on his travels the next morning was disappointed to only find Mary and the boys, with Lincoln already a couple hundred miles away.
I can't seem to find a definite answer of how many times Lincoln came to Pennsylvania during his lifetime. There was this occasion, and of course the Gettysburg Address, which was delivered a couple years later. It's known that he went to Philadelphia four times, including to attend the Great Sanitary Fair, which was his only official public appearance in the city; the other visits were probably more private occasions. Very possibly there were others as well, which haven't come up in my research yet. Lincoln is my second-favorite* President, so it makes me happy to know that he was in my beloved commonwealth as much as he was.
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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