Colbert I. King: New Face For Lincoln's Capital.
New face for Lincoln's capital
By Colbert I. King
WASHINGTON -- My great-grandfather Isaiah King, who served in the Civil War as a private in the 5th Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry, described his chance meeting with Abraham Lincoln in a 1932 interview with the New Bedford (Mass.) Evening Standard.
Great-granddaddy was seated at a banquet in Richmond where they were celebrating the Union army's victorious entrance into the capital of the Confederacy when he saw "a tall gangly looking man in a tall silk hat walking up through the aisles between the tables, stooping a little as if he were afraid of touching the ceiling. ... I asked a waiter who that farmer was and learned that it was our president."
Great-granddaddy's finding himself in the presence of America's 16th president was nothing like my sighting of the nation's 44th president last week at Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln lost his life.
Lincoln, as my great-grandfather told the story, came into their midst with little fanfare.
In our case, we were told by an announcement over the public address system that the motorcade carrying President and Mrs. Obama had just left the White House for the celebration of the Lincoln bicentennial and the grand reopening of Ford's, and that we should take our seats and behave ourselves.
In his day, Lincoln apparently associated freely with great-granddaddy and his armed comrades.
We, on the other hand, were moved into the theater, one by one, through metal detectors. (That was a minor inconvenience, considering that the presence of such a contraption at Ford's Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865, might have changed the path of American history.)
Metal detectors, however, had not been invented. Neither had automobiles, which -- for presidential security reasons -- were as scarce on 10th Street at the grand reopening celebration as they were on Lincoln's last night at the theater.
But this is not a "what if" reverie.
It is, rather, a marvel at the America we have become in the 200 years since Lincoln's birth.
The black-tie gathering in the refurbished theater told only part of the story. Yes, it was an audience filled with luminaries (yours truly excluded). But Ford's Theatre has always had such a draw. It comes with the territory for official Washington.
What made the occasion a standout, however, was the new face of the black-tie gathering.
Washington and its theater crowd wasn't always thus. When great-granddaddy King and the 5th Cavalry rode into the siege of Petersburg, they encountered a Confederate enemy burrowed within the city and ready to fight. And that enemy fought.
My great-grandfather stood long hours of picket duty and dodged sharpshooters. "The cavalry opened the battle to hold the line and give the alarm, then fall back to the secondary lines. ... We often ran into ambush," he said.
But when the war was over, Washington refused to recognize the valor of the black Union soldier.
Today, about five blocks from Ford's Theatre, near the Treasury Department, stands a statue of the Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, who is honored with that monument for turning the Civil War in Lincoln's favor by capturing Atlanta.
According to Tersh Boasberg, chairman of the Washington Historic Preservation Review Board, Sherman is also remembered for having denied black Union troops the right to march down Pennsylvania Avenue along with their white comrades in arms in the two-day victory parade in May 1865.
Great-granddaddy would have been unwelcome in the parade. He probably wouldn't have found a seat at Ford's Theatre, either.
Last week, two front-row center seats at Ford's Theatre were occupied by America's President and First Lady -- respectively, the son of a black African father and white American mother, and the daughter of black Americans.
Two blocks south across Pennsylvania Avenue is the Justice Department, led by the nation's first African-American attorney general. He and his wife, an accomplished physician and daughter of a noted civil rights family, also occupied orchestra seats.
Also in the audience paying tribute to Abraham Lincoln's legacy were the mayor and first lady of Washington -- two people of color -- and a biracial gathering of city council members.
How different today's Ford's Theatre audience; how different Washington.
In 1862, Washington, once a center of the slave trade, was led by a board of aldermen.
When the Senate took up a bill for emancipation in Washington in March 1862, aldermen were so fearful of freedom's consequences that they passed a resolution urging Congress to provide "safeguards against converting this city ... into an asylum for free negroes, a population undesirable in every American community."
That was then.
Yet, if the celebration of Lincoln's legacy were limited only to an acknowledgment of official Washington's changing hue, it would not be worth the time and expense.
For a country in crisis, it is more than that.
Words from Lincoln's second message to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, capture and embolden the spirit of today's Washington: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."
Lincoln informs our times.
That must make great-granddaddy King smile.
Colbert I. King is a retired editor of The Washington Post's editorial page.
By Colbert I. King
WASHINGTON -- My great-grandfather Isaiah King, who served in the Civil War as a private in the 5th Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry, described his chance meeting with Abraham Lincoln in a 1932 interview with the New Bedford (Mass.) Evening Standard.
Great-granddaddy was seated at a banquet in Richmond where they were celebrating the Union army's victorious entrance into the capital of the Confederacy when he saw "a tall gangly looking man in a tall silk hat walking up through the aisles between the tables, stooping a little as if he were afraid of touching the ceiling. ... I asked a waiter who that farmer was and learned that it was our president."
Great-granddaddy's finding himself in the presence of America's 16th president was nothing like my sighting of the nation's 44th president last week at Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln lost his life.
Lincoln, as my great-grandfather told the story, came into their midst with little fanfare.
In our case, we were told by an announcement over the public address system that the motorcade carrying President and Mrs. Obama had just left the White House for the celebration of the Lincoln bicentennial and the grand reopening of Ford's, and that we should take our seats and behave ourselves.
In his day, Lincoln apparently associated freely with great-granddaddy and his armed comrades.
We, on the other hand, were moved into the theater, one by one, through metal detectors. (That was a minor inconvenience, considering that the presence of such a contraption at Ford's Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865, might have changed the path of American history.)
Metal detectors, however, had not been invented. Neither had automobiles, which -- for presidential security reasons -- were as scarce on 10th Street at the grand reopening celebration as they were on Lincoln's last night at the theater.
But this is not a "what if" reverie.
It is, rather, a marvel at the America we have become in the 200 years since Lincoln's birth.
The black-tie gathering in the refurbished theater told only part of the story. Yes, it was an audience filled with luminaries (yours truly excluded). But Ford's Theatre has always had such a draw. It comes with the territory for official Washington.
What made the occasion a standout, however, was the new face of the black-tie gathering.
Washington and its theater crowd wasn't always thus. When great-granddaddy King and the 5th Cavalry rode into the siege of Petersburg, they encountered a Confederate enemy burrowed within the city and ready to fight. And that enemy fought.
My great-grandfather stood long hours of picket duty and dodged sharpshooters. "The cavalry opened the battle to hold the line and give the alarm, then fall back to the secondary lines. ... We often ran into ambush," he said.
But when the war was over, Washington refused to recognize the valor of the black Union soldier.
Today, about five blocks from Ford's Theatre, near the Treasury Department, stands a statue of the Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, who is honored with that monument for turning the Civil War in Lincoln's favor by capturing Atlanta.
According to Tersh Boasberg, chairman of the Washington Historic Preservation Review Board, Sherman is also remembered for having denied black Union troops the right to march down Pennsylvania Avenue along with their white comrades in arms in the two-day victory parade in May 1865.
Great-granddaddy would have been unwelcome in the parade. He probably wouldn't have found a seat at Ford's Theatre, either.
Last week, two front-row center seats at Ford's Theatre were occupied by America's President and First Lady -- respectively, the son of a black African father and white American mother, and the daughter of black Americans.
Two blocks south across Pennsylvania Avenue is the Justice Department, led by the nation's first African-American attorney general. He and his wife, an accomplished physician and daughter of a noted civil rights family, also occupied orchestra seats.
Also in the audience paying tribute to Abraham Lincoln's legacy were the mayor and first lady of Washington -- two people of color -- and a biracial gathering of city council members.
How different today's Ford's Theatre audience; how different Washington.
In 1862, Washington, once a center of the slave trade, was led by a board of aldermen.
When the Senate took up a bill for emancipation in Washington in March 1862, aldermen were so fearful of freedom's consequences that they passed a resolution urging Congress to provide "safeguards against converting this city ... into an asylum for free negroes, a population undesirable in every American community."
That was then.
Yet, if the celebration of Lincoln's legacy were limited only to an acknowledgment of official Washington's changing hue, it would not be worth the time and expense.
For a country in crisis, it is more than that.
Words from Lincoln's second message to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, capture and embolden the spirit of today's Washington: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."
Lincoln informs our times.
That must make great-granddaddy King smile.
Colbert I. King is a retired editor of The Washington Post's editorial page.
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