Lincoln visited with Wounded Soldiers spent time with self , emancipated men, women and children, and drafted the emancipation proclamation. Joan cummins is a public historian, artist, and educator. As a program assistant, she supports their public facing programming, particularly for students and teachers. She works very closely with one of their programs called students opposing slavery for young abolitionists working to combat human trafficking. She is the cohost of a podcast, which i think is a terrific name, called q and abe. Welcome to history happy hour. Thanks so much for having me. Im excited to be here and to share you all about lincolns experience during the summer of his presidency. He lived at president lincolns cottage for three summers while he was president. The summer of 1862, 1863, and 1864. The family was planning to come out here again for the summer of 1865 when the president was killed. There were three main reasons the family moved to the cottage as opposed to staying in the white house through the summer. The first is as many of you may , know, summer in d. C. Can be very sticky and humid and unpleasant. The population of d. C. Was rapidly increasing during the civil war, so the infrastructure of the city was having trouble handling that. Not to mention, the white house at that was open to the public. Point anyone who had a question or wanted a job could line up and ask. The lincolns were looking for some relief from the pressure of downtown. The other big reason they were looking to get away from the white house was because in february of 1862, their middle son willie died in the white house at the age of 12. The family was looking for a place that did not around every corner remind them of willies loss. What mrs. Lincoln said about it, when we are in sorrow, quiet is very necessary to us. I want to show you all the picture of the cottage from her family album. Her family photo album. This for me is a reminder that the cottage is one of the few places we are sure the lincolns were happy to be during the civil war while they were here in washington, d. C. The other big reason and this is what the cottage looks like today. Right there up against that historic photo if you are curious about that. The last big reason the family was looking to come out to the cottage was because lincoln was facing an extremely difficult and complicated presidency. He had a lot of challenges facing him. He was looking for a place to think about complicated things. I encourage you to think about whatever the place is in your life that works for you to think about complicated things. Many people are looking for a place that is a little bit quiet, that perhaps has access to the outdoors that could use space to think. The cottage was that place for abraham lincoln. While he was out here, it was very much not a vacation for him. Lincoln was commuting to and from the white house every day to work. It took him about a half hour to ride the three miles from the cottage to the white house. It was mostly on horseback. He was often going alone. I can imagine it would be nice to have that halfhour to yourself to ride to work through the woods in the morning because the commute also gave lincoln an opportunity to talk to ordinary people he met along the way, whether that was people who had escaped slavery living on the outskirts of d. C. , whether that was Wounded Soldiers and ambulances on the road to the hospital, or active serving soldiers camped in his backyard on this nice green lawn on the south side of the cottage who had been detailed there to guard the site and the president. In addition the campus then, as , now, is a retirement home for veterans. Lincoln had access to folks who had already served in the armed services. While he was up here lincoln was , working on one of the pricing pressing challenges of his presidency, what do we do about slavery . He had been sure from the beginning of his presidency he believed slavery was wrong and the question was, what could he do about it . While he was at the cottage, lincoln developed the emancipation proclamation. This was the room in which he did so. It was the biggest bedroom in the cottage. You can see it is sort of open and airy. Those two windows overlook the capital. They look south over the city. We are the at the thirdhighest elevation in the city of washington, d. C. Lincoln wouldve had a big vista of the city in front of him. That is a replica of his desk in the center. The emancipation proclamation wove together several aspects of the problem. How to keep the country together, what was going on with the war, what lincoln personally believed was the right thing to do. The cottage gave him the space and time to come up with a very carefully crafted answer to that question. The proclamation was addressed as a bit of a challenge to the confederate states. It said you have 100 days to peacefully come back and rejoin the country. If you come back, you can keep all the people you enslaved and everything will be the same as it was before. If you do not come back, the enslaved people will become free. Nobody took lincoln up on that offer. The emancipation proclamation took effect in full on january 1 of 1863. Itd only apply to people who were enslaved in confederate territory. While it applies to over 4 Million People who were enslaved it did not free everyone who had , been enslaved in the country at that point. There is plenty more complications to the proclamation we could talk about. For me, what matters about the cottage is that it gave lincoln the space and the time he needed to work on this idea and figure out how it was going to work because the proclamation had has been a foundation on which many other people had been able to build, including those people whom it freed in the first place. The other thing i think i value about this place is it gave lincoln the chance to be a person as well as a president. It gave him a chance to sit on the carpet and play toy soldiers with his son, to sit on the porch and read the newspaper. That is part of why our statue of lincoln, which is at the cottage or looking at now, is lifesize. It is 64. Lincoln is still the tallest person to be president of the United States. Part of what we hope for when people come to the cottage is that they also have the chance to get a taste of the experience that lincoln had. That they have a moment of peace, that they have been opportunity to reflect on their principles and that they have a chance to think deeply about what they want the future of america to look like so this can continue to be a home for brave ideas. There is a couple ways to find out more about the cottage if you would like to do so. We are open for outdoor tours at the moment. In an effort to be as safe as humanly possible under the circumstances. You can also listen to our podcast that colleen mentioned, which takes real visitor questions have gotten on tors that we wish we could take a half hour answering. It is more of me talking, so if you are enjoying that, that is a great starting point. For now im going to turn your , back over to colleen so we can jump forward in time. Thank you for that presentation. We will move forward in time. The next guest is from the summer retreat established by president Herbert Hoover during his administration. The camp is located within the boundaries of Shenandoah National park. It has recently been restored to its 1929 appearance and is an excellent reflection not only of his era but of president hoover himself. Claire is an interpretive special at Shenandoah National park. She began leading tours of the camp in 1990 and has been involved in the restoration of the president s cabin and in the development of an exhibit. When the camp transitioned to a popular interpretive site. Welcome, claire to history happy , hour. Thank you so much. I am excited to be with you all and share a little bit about the camp. When Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928, he and misses mrs. Hoover knew immediately they would need a place to renew their balance and strength. A place to rejuvenate. A place to escape what he called the pneumatic hammer of public contact. Of finding the perfect spot to one of the secretaries. Lawrence ritchie delivered. He had three criteria to work with. One was they wanted a place close to washington, d. C. Like within maybe 100 miles. They wanted to be able to go to the camp frequently. The second criteria was they wanted something in the mountains, something at a Higher Elevation because we know what washington, d. C. Summers can be like. This is the days before air conditioning. The third and most important criteria was it had to have trout. As i said Lawrence Ritchie , delivered in a big way. Today i would like to take you to the hoovers home. So, here we are on the porch of the brown house. People have told me that hoover was a dour man without a sense of humor. I doubt that because i think it is kind of fun he named this the brown house. Get it . White house, brown house . This is where the hoovers were. They derived a lot of peace and rejuvenation from the outdoors. When mrs. Hoover designed the camp, which she was responsible for all kinds of details, she wanted to look for ways to bring the outdoors in and to provide Great Outdoor spaces. All of the cabins have these huge, wonderful decks. I want to take you to a particular feature of this deck and look at a couple of things right here. I want you to notice this and all right here and these hinges. We are going to talk about that more in a few minutes. Looks like there is a problem here. If you look down here, you see a hole in the deck. That was totally on purpose. The hoovers, being huge lovers of nature, they did not want to cut down the trees. They let the tree grow right through the porch and into the roof. It had to be unfortunately taken out in later years. Lets take a look inside and see these relaxing, beautiful spaces she created. The hoovers came often. One of the things that happened to sort of evolve about the camp is they started to use it as a working retreat as well as a recreational retreat. Hoover would have themed weekends where he would invite people around a certain issue. He liked to isolate them so they could have these intense conversations and not be interrupted. For example, one weekend, he invited charles lindbergh, the postmaster general, and several other people and they discussed the possibility of airmail. That was something he did a lot. Here is what i wanted to talk to you about that window. Remember we looked at that panel. This is the inside of that panel. Because she wanted to bring the outdoors in, she created these panels. The inspiration for that was tents. Originally she wanted tents. She wanted canvas. This is what they had at first. But there was this incessant flapping. It drove them nuts. Plus, they wanted to be able to come more often in the chillier months. They actually enclosed with this german siding. But because she liked the idea of tent flaps, she created these wooden ones ones that went down. As you can see over here, the windows tilt out. Again she is bringing the , outdoors in. Lots of details that she wanted to make sure it was a relaxing, wonderful spot. Not so much as her corner office. How about that . I would love to work there. I think i could get like nothing done. Lets take a look at the bedroom. Originally, they shared a bedroom. As things got a little chaotic during his administration, they added a second bedroom. If you do this tour on your own, which you can, i am just hitting some high spots, do not miss his shower. It was a tin shower. I bet it was a little chilly in the morning. The greatest thing about hoovers bedroom is this is what was out his door. This is what was part of the lure of the camp. Because he loved to fish. He spent a lot of time at the camp when he was not in meetings and working. He spent as much time as he could fishing. You see his reel here. There are the poles. I wanted to talk about his connections to the stream and to fishing. If you look in his own words, president hoovers personal secretary or personal physician said that he never saw hoover happier then when he was at the camp. He would jump out of the car without even changing clothes and head to the stream. In his own words, hoover said to go fishing as a sound, valid, and accepted reason for an escape. It requires no explanation. Probably most poetic, he said, to go fishing is the chance to wash ones soul with pure air, with the rush of the brook or the shimmer of sun on blue water. It brings meekness and inspiration from the deepness of nature. Patience towards fish. A mockery of profit and ego. A quieting of hate. A rejoicing that you do not have to decide a darned thing until next week. And it is discipline and the equality of men were all men are equal before fish. Makes you want to grab a fishing pole and head on out to shenandoah. Thanks for inviting me and i look forward to your questions. Thanks so much for joining us. That was a fascinating explanation. Also very intrigued by president hoover and fishing. That is a new fact for me. Our last guest is from Marthas Vineyard museum. Founded in 1922 as the dukes county historical society, it changed its name in 2006 to better reflect its extensive objects, archival documents, historic books, photographs, paintings and oral histories. First came to Marthas Vineyard at the age of three months and returned every summer until he moved there permanently in 2011. He finished his phd in history from the university of wisconsin at madison and taught at University Level for 21 years before joining the Marthas Vineyard museum as a reference librarian, journal editor, and staff historian in 2014. Welcome to history happy hour. Greetings, everybody from the island of Marthas Vineyard, five miles off the coast of cape cod in southeastern massachusetts where for the or 6000 years of human first 5000 habitation, it was all about fishing and farming, farming and fishing, until one the years immediately following the civil war, a group of enterprising businessmen got the idea of buying up some unused farmland by the sea in the north corner of the island and resort. Establishing the summer resort. Turnedves oak bluff out to be spot. It became within 15 years, a town in its own right and set the island on the path to where it has been ever since world war ii. A place where people still fish and still farm but where the economy is mostly dependent on summer and offseason tourism. The very first of the nine or 10 people who at one point in their lives were president of the United States and visited the vineyard was ulysses s. Grant who came for three days in 1874, visiting oak bluffs soon after it began to take off as a summer resort. Grant did not have what we think of today as a typical vacation. He stayed at a tiny cottage owned by a methodist Bishop Gilbert haven, watched a firework show, dined with friends and gave what may yet be the shortest political speech ever recorded, which ran all of four lines and took less than 30 seconds. Its most inspiring line being, i know you are all tired. So am i. Have a good night. Other president s followed in grants footsteps, but the vineyard was really put on the president ial vacation map in the early 1990s when president bill clinton came for the first of what would be seven president ial vacations in 1993. The exception being 1996 when he was running for reelection. President barack obama followed suit, coming for the first time in 2009 and returning every summer except for 2012 when he was running for reelection. Part of the appeal of the vineyard vacation is the island, all 100 square miles and six counts of it, is incredibly diverse. Your vacation there can be whatever it is you want it to be. For both clinton and obama, a big part of their time on the island was playing golf with their other wellknown summer residents like Vernon Jordan or steph curry or Alonzo Mourning or with locals who were lucky , enough to get invited. There was even one epic moment during one of obamas later vacations when bill clinton joined him. You can imagine what the press and secret service entourage at the golf course was like that day. Both the clintons and obamas liked to go out to dinner with friends and liked to be seen visiting some of the local shops. They both frequented the two independent bookstores. They stopped for ice cream at mad marthas. The obamas perused the unbelievably overcrowded and diverse shelves at allies general store, which had been in business since the 1860s. That said, each of the two president s who spent multiple summers on the vineyard and had their own distinctive vacationing style. Clinton, as would surprise nobody who followed his presidency, loved to get out among the people of Marthas Vineyard, whether at the fences of the golf course, the airport or the ice cream parlor, shake peoples hands, chat people up. It is still talked about to this day how in the summer of 1993, at the first couples visit to the bookstore in Vineyard HavenHillary Clinton shook the hand , and took the time to talk to every single employee of the store, giving them a onceinalifetime experience. The closest i have ever come to a Marthas Vineyardbased brush with a president was my mom working as a volunteer for a Charity Golf Tournament where president clinton showed up to make some kind of speech and wish people well and she got to shake his hand and said, my gosh, now i know why he is president. It is just electric to be around him. A lot of vineyarders felt like that about him. The obamas tended to be quieter, more reserved, and to do more as a family during the day. President obama liked his golf, but he also, as was wellknown, like his basketball. The house they stayed in on the north shore of the island featured a halfcourt Basketball Court on which he and whoever was around to play with him could shoot a few hoops in between whatever else was going on. The obamas were famous for their many long bike rides along the islands networks of bike paths. And in one of his earlier vacations, he excited a bit of a furor by being pictured not wearing a bicycle helmet as he rode along the shoreline in edgartown. This excited some comment and lead to a White House Press