Two tours for the road: D.C. off beaten path

So it is vacation time and you have saved up for a trip to Washington D.C.. The family wants to see Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, of course, along with the Smithsonian’s African American History and Culture Museum. But may we also suggest a couple of sites not featured on tour bus routes?
How about President Lincoln’s Cottage and the Museum of the Bible?
The historic cottage is where President Abraham Lincoln penned the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln traveled by horse three miles to and from the White House to this cottage during the heated summers of the Civil War.
This author had never heard of it before last week, actually. But while browsing a map of the capitol city, there it was. Tickets can be purchased at www.lincolncottage.org at $15 per adult and $5 for children 6 to 12. Children under six are free.
Since its opening in 2008, the site has frequently been voted “Best Museum Off the Mall” on WashingtonCityPaper.com.
Before touring the cottage, there are a few engaging exhibits and videos to watch, all of which enlighten visitors on the family life of America’s 16th president.
After the White House death of one of their four sons, the Lincolns were invited to summer at the cottage in 1862, away from the heat and business of the city. The site is the third highest point in the D.C. area, surrounded by trees and cooler air.
Located on federal grounds, alongside Armed Forces Retirement Homes, The cottage was built in 1842 as a private home for banker George W. Riggs, who gave it and the nearly 300 acres around it to the government.
Tour guides lead guests through the cottage rooms and, as events of the 1860s are re-told by actors over speakers, Lincoln’s story comes to life.
During conversations with guests, tour guides explain how Lincoln made some of his most critical decisions about freedom, the Union and the presidency in this cottage. And while the scarce furniture at the site is not original, one can imagine him placing his stovepipe hat on the hanger near the front stairwell and walking out to the cool rear veranda to breathe in the magnolia tree’s gentle fragrances in the backyard.
Guests learn that the backyard often served as a staging area for Union Army troops, awaiting assignment, or veterans recovering from war wounds. The President and his son Thomas “Tad” Lincoln would often visit and chat with the troops there.
Although Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, an Executive Order, in his bedroom at the cottage, when he presented it to Congress, they were not eager to have it issued until the Union had struck a victory in the war.
The Emancipation Proclamation finally went into effect on January 1, 1863, making three major changes in the country: (1) Changing the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African- Americans in the Confederate states from enslaved to free. (2) Ensuring that as soon as slaves escaped the control of their enslavers—either by fleeing to Union lines or through the advance of federal troops—they were permanently free. And (3) allowing former slaves to “be received into the armed service of the United States.”
All who honor ancestors who survived the horrors of America’s slavery system should also feel a desire to visit this home where Lincoln changed the course of the nation.
President Lincoln, though he did not belong to a church, often quoted the Bible and used its language to express the union’s moral reasons for fighting the war. As a senatorial candidate, he quoted Mark 3:25, where Jesus said “If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”
Additional Bible knowledge is explored at a second don’t-miss spot in Washington D.C. – the Museum of the Bible.
The museum’s six floors delve into this bestselling book’s history, from handwritten scrolls to mobile devices. There is a reproduction of the 1455 Gutenberg printing press which mass produced the Latin Bible, the earliest major book printed in Europe.
Prior to the press, Bibles were expensively copied by hand, out of reach to the masses.
Guests roam the floors to discover the Bible’s global influence in diverse areas like music, fashion and government and the book’s significant impact on the culture of America and the world. References are highlighted in videos, photos, collages, exhibits and statues throughout the museum.
William Shakespere was well-versed in the Geneva Bible and included references to it in his plays and sonnets. There is also a picture collage that includes President Barack Obama announcing his creation of the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance in 2015.
It is noted that over the years, Blacks used the biblical story of Exodus as an analogy for the struggles against slavery and segregation.
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass is featured in a mural and it is noted that the slave states also used the Bible to justify the existence of slavery.
In his 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass states “In the name of the Constitution and the Bible… everything that serves to perpetuate slavery – the great sin and shame of America!”
There is another colorful wall mural of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressing the crowd during the March on Washington. King preached the freedom, justice and equality language of the Bible, describing the fight for civil rights as a struggle between good and evil.
The museum also has a floor where one can walk through the stories of the Hebrew Bible and learn more about the world of Jesus of Nazareth in the Galilee Theater and the immersive New Testament Experience.
“No other book of any kind ever written in English… has ever so affected the whole life of a people,” said Theodore Roosevelt.
Tickets to the Museum of the Bible are $29.99 for adults and $19.99 for youth 5 to 17. Children 4 and under are free. For more information, visit museumoftheBible.org.
Tags: National, entertainment, Lincoln’s Cottage, Museum of the Bible, Washington D.C., tours, Abraham Lincoln, vacation, historic, Emancipation Proclamation