![The grand [Lincoln] presidential party at the White House, Washington, D.C. February 6th [1862] (Illus. in: Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, (1862 February 22), p. 216-17; LOC: LC-USZ62-59906)](https://www.bluegrayreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/3b07646r.jpg)
“the best building in the country”, February 1862 (Frank Leslie’s 2-22-1862)
“The buck stops here,” but President Lincoln did not seem to have any role in the following account – except that a Democrat paper put his name in the headline. Still, it was probably a tasty story for the newspaper’s partisan readers as the presidential election approached. Keep the base fired up.
From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in October 1864:
Lincoln and Stanton Refuse a Roof to the Wounded Soldiers.
In the statement of the causes which led to his removal, which has just been published by Surgeon-General Hammond, we find the startling disclosures:
After Pope’s defeat, when the wounded wero [sic] brought to Washington by the thousands, I found it necessary to extend still further the hospital accomodations. The churches and other public buildings were filled, the Patent Office was used for the sick and wounded, and the only other public buildings available were the Capitol and the Executive Mansion. The latter was not then occupied by the President, or his family, and not long before a company of soldiers had been quartered in it. I, therefore, made application for the Capitol, and for the east room in the President’s House, the latter to be used as an officers’ hospital. – When the application reached the Secretar [sic] he sent for me, and I was again the recipient of his abuse. Again I repelled it, as I always did. I knew not why the sick and wounded should not have the best building in the country; if it was necessary. – Hundreds were then lying upon the ground for want of a place to put them, and I told him so in plain language. The end of it was, that the Capitol was ordered to be turned over to me. He was afraid to refuse it, but he informed me that I should hear from him again on the subject, which however, I never did, except that he told a distinguished officer in the army that my conduct was highly presumptuous. The East Room was never turned over if he or[d?]ered it.
Bad blood between Secretary of War Stanton and Surgeon General William Alexander Hammond led to Hammond’s dismissal effective August 18, 1864.
wounded source: second day of Second Bull Run (Frank Leslie’s 9-20-1862)
