The Evolution of Washington, DC by James M. Goode

Author:James M. Goode [Goode, James M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58834-506-6
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)
Published: 2015-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

Colored lithograph, Douglas & Stanton Hospitals, Charles Magnus, New York, 1864. 12 × 17 in. AS 466.

Douglas & Stanton Hospitals, Washington, D.C.

The Douglas and Stanton Hospitals, located at I and 2nd Streets N.W., were opened to receive wounded Union troops in early 1862. The Douglas Hospital occupied the three large rowhouses shown in the left center of the print, while the Stanton Hospital was located in newly built one-story wooden wards.

A row of three large houses, known as “Douglas Row,” was built in 1856–57 as an investment by Sen. Stephen A. Douglas (1813–61) of Illinois. Douglas was a major force in supporting the Compromise of 1850, which had been meant to settle the slavery issue. However, he reopened the slavery question when, as chairman of the Committee on Territories, he instigated the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This reversed the former policy of not allowing slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska by allowing the settlers to decide for themselves whether to keep slaves. Opposition to this view, known as “popularity sovereignty,” led to the formation of the Republican Party. Douglas ran as the Northern Democratic candidate against Lincoln in 1860. The slavery issue split the Democratic Party into three factions with three different candidates that year, and this divisiveness allowed Lincoln to win the election. Although he lost the presidency, Douglas strongly supported Lincoln and opposed secession. He died in Chicago of typhoid fever only two months after the Civil War began.

After the houses were completed in 1857, Douglas and his wife, Adele Cutts, grandniece of James Madison, gave a large reception for local and national notables. The two other houses were purchased by other politicians—Sen. Henry M. Rice of Minnesota and Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, Adele Douglas, by then a widow, and Senator Rice moved out of Douglas Row and offered the houses to the government for use as a military hospital. The government accepted and soon seized the third house for hospital use, since it was owned by Breckinridge, who had become a Confederate major general. Across the street was a vacant square block, also owned by the Douglas family. It was quickly converted to one-story wards and named Stanton Hospital after Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

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