Lincoln's Cottage: A Visit to a 19th Century Camp David, Part 1

STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember. BARBARA KLEIN: And I'm Barbara Klein. This week on our program, we take you to President Lincoln's Cottage in Washington. STEVE EMBER: Our story begins on the evening of Wednesday, September seventeenth, eighteen sixty-two. The Civil War between the Union North and Confederate South is in its second year. The first major battle on Northern territory has just been fought that day a hundred kilometers from Washington. Union troops defeated a rebel invasion in the Battle of Antietam in the state of Maryland. In all, more than twenty thousand soldiers were killed or wounded. September seventeenth, eighteen sixty-two, becomes the single bloodiest day in American military history. President Abraham Lincoln is fighting to keep the Southern states of the Confederacy from leaving the Union. But from his office in the White House, he must also attend to his other duties as president of the United States. BARBARA KLEIN: In summertime, which can get very hot in Washington, President Lincoln used a country house. It was about five kilometers from the White House. Each morning and evening, Lincoln rode between the two houses on horseback, unguarded. Buildings would give way to farmland as he rode north out of the city. In about thirty minutes, he would arrive at the grounds of the Soldiers' Home. Just inside the gate was a large house used by the president and his family. This house was on much higher ground than the White House, so the wind kept it cooler. It was also quiet -- a place to think. STEVE EMBER: On this day we imagine Lincoln climbing the stairs to his study on the second floor. He places his tall black hat on his desk and opens a large window. He feels cooler already. He lights two lamps and sits down at the desk. An important document that he has been writing, and rewriting, waits for him. He began working on it soon after he became president in eighteen sixty-one. Lincoln has been thinking long and hard to develop his ideas and capture them in words. What he is writing sounds like it was written by a lawyer. He was, after all, a lawyer in Illinois before he became president. But this is different. It involves the war, the ownership of human beings and the future of the divided nation. He knows that some people will support it, some will reject it and some will say it changes nothing. It will free the slaves, but only in areas where Lincoln has no power. BARBARA KLEIN: Slavery was legal in the Confederate States of America -- the South. But it was also legal in several neighboring states that remained loyal to the Union. Many Americans wanted Lincoln to free all the slaves. Lincoln opposed slavery. But he needed the continued loyalty of those border states, like Maryland and Kentucky, or risk losing the Civil War. STEVE EMBER: The sixteenth president looks again at what he has written. Lincoln feels that what he is doing will give the war effort new meaning. He feels that in time it will lead to the end of slavery in the United States. On this day, September seventeenth, he has finished his second draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Soon he will share it with his cabinet. BARBARA KLEIN: Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary version five days later, on September twenty-second, eighteen sixty-two. It declared that slaves would be free anywhere that was still in rebellion on January first, eighteen sixty-three. The final version of the Emancipation Proclamation came on January first, declaring: " ... all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free ... " The document would become one of the most important in American history. The Emancipation Proclamation is in the National Archives in Washington, and it can be seen online at archives.gov. STEVE EMBER: Lincoln was right that it would not be very popular. But he was also right that it would be the first step toward ending slavery in the United States. The proclamation also welcomed freed slaves to serve in the Union Army and Navy. By the end of the war, more than two hundred thousand blacks had joined the armed services. Source: Voice of America