Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home.

Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home. By Matthew Pinsker. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xvi, 256. $30.00, ISBN 0-19-516206-4.)

The Soldiers' Home was established outside Washington, D.C., in the 1850s, to provide a residence for disabled U.S. soldiers. At the time of the Civil War, the facility consisted of a main building and four substantial "cottages" located on extensive, shaded grounds (p. 2). Officials at the home offered the president and the secretary of war use of the cottages during the summer to escape from the Washington heat. Abraham Lincoln and his family accepted the offer for three summers, from 1862 to 1864, arriving in June or early July and returning to the capital in late October or early November. Although Mary and the Lincoln boys vacationed elsewhere for part of the time, Lincoln spent about thirteen months of his presidency at the home, traveling into Washington each day to work.

Matthew Pinsker has written an unusual book because the focus is on the time Lincoln spent at the home and how it impacted his decisions during the period. The book is divided into three sections, by year. In each case, Pinsker gives a brief synopsis of preceding events, so that readers understand the issues Lincoln was facing at the time he moved to the home. But once Lincoln has left the home for the year, the narrative stops.

Pinsker stresses the connections between Lincoln's private life at the home and the decisions he made. The atmosphere of the home was more casual than that of the White House, and Lincoln received numerous guests there, both the invited and those who invited themselves, either because they had an urgent need or because they were curious. Pinsker assesses how these conversations and meetings influenced or revealed the development of Lincoln's attitudes toward, among other issues, emancipation, the leadership of General George B. McClellan, and the election of 1864. Pinsker also studies the development of protection for Lincoln as the president made daily trips of half an hour in each direction.

There is no collection of materials pertaining to Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home, so Pinsker mined at least seventy-five reminiscences, diaries, and letter collections. These include the well known, such as the diary of Lincoln's Illinois colleague Orville Browning, and the obscure, most importantly the memoir of Captain David V. Derickson and the letters of Private Willard Cutter, both of whom served in Company K of the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry, the troops who functioned as Lincoln's guards. Pinsker carefully analyzes the reliability of the various accounts, comparing them with other supportive or refuting evidence.

Pinsker has written a carefully researched, interestingly presented, and thoughtfully argued monograph, intriguing to Civil War specialists as well as the general reader.

Springfield, Illinois 

GLENNA R. SCHROEDER-LEIN