1840s and '50s doesn't preclude john gatsby and other members of his family were engaged in the sale of human beings on the property and research continues on this question. in fact, if there were enslaved people, this group of enslaved people performing domestic tasks on the property while others were being held and sold on the property, that would only further confirm the complexity of horrors inflicted by the institution of slavery. now, the earliest depiction of a building that matches the shape and orientation of the slave quarters that exists today is an outline of a footprint on a map of washington, d.c. surveyed almost the same time as the 1858 inventory. you see it circled here in blue. the map shows again a building joined to the back of decatur house, and extending west on h street. as the slave quarters still does today, the building depicted in this map forms the northern boundary of a three sided compound, organized around a

central open space. circled in red, you see similar arrangements of buildings at other residential properties in and around lafayette square. now, about same time the preceding map was being surveyed, mj williams created what was an ice metric rendering of the white house and buildings surrounding it. it didn't include decatur house, but it does provide a three-dimensional look at compound structure similar to those at decatur house and located even closer to the white house. such compounds and urban slave quarters were found in other cities like savannah, charleston, mobile, new orleans, and were relatively well documented by the historic american building survey in the late 1930s. the home of the slave, written in 1901, buildings like this and

like those at decatur house, called town group quarters where he said few house servants were fairly welhoused. the slave quarters at decatur house ceased being there for enslaved people before 1862. in late 1861, the u.s. government took possession of nine lots belonging to the gatsby heirs, adjacent to lafayette square. this shows decatur house and slave quarters as part of the complex of buildings planned by quarter master general. it is clear from correspondence by commissary general that the military wanted to use the second floor of the slave quarters to house sub cyst tense bureau civilian and military personnel. the commissary general vacated decatur house in 1874, turning it over to edward beal who purchased it from the gatsby

heirs. they made extensive renovations during first years of ownership. but the only significant change made to slave quarters was in stall agency of a new slate roof over the original wood shingle roof, likely around 1875. the earliest known photograph of slave quarters is this 1885 image, in which the north elevation of the slave quarters is barely visible over here. but you get the sense of it, its size and shape. the african-american men pictured in the foreground could have been servants living in the slave quarters. i am going to continue to use that term to talk about the building, not only because it makes clear the original intent of its construction, but also it was the ver knack lar name used for it in the 20th century. 1880 census listed three african-american servants, william hanson, john smith, and elizabeth abby living in the

house of edward beal. by 1900, the population of servants living on the property had doubled. of the six servants living on the property, five were classified on the census as black. mazie worked as a reader. ellen, a ladies made. emma thomas, lawn dress, was the only married servant in the household. loid lyles, a coach man, aid doll of bird, a butler. only one of the african-american servants had been born while slavery was still legal in the united states and she was the only certificate vanlt on lafayette square listed as unable to read or write. the only white servant listed in the decatur household was born in austria, was the first live in servant from europe recorded at decatur house. now, this image of the slave quarters taken between 1918 and 1920 offers the first truly detailed record of the building's appearance.

and it shows how little the exterior of the building changed. the only real major differences of how this portion of the building still appears is that there's one additional door providing access to h street and no shutters on that side of the building at this point. the next census to record servants living at the decatur house was the last federal se e census currently available. kate hollis, the only servant classified as negro, was born in virginia, and she worked as a cook. on the top left, you see a photograph of the north elevation of the slave quarters taken in 1936. again, showing no changes to this side of the building. at the same time, the historic american building survey made the first known photograph of the courtyard side of the

building, again which remains relatively unchanged. the historic american building survey also produced elevations and floor plans of the slave quarters in 1937. but no interior photographs. these floor plans assign uses to all interior spaces in slave quarters, demonstrating few changes from uses in the 1844 inventory. moving westward through the building in 1937, the first floor had a servants dining room, kitchen, laundry, and a small bat room. on the second floor, two rooms at the east end are servants rooms as they have been in 1844. the beal family owned decatur house and show the only major change to the building was addition of shutters on the h street side in 1944. marie beal in correspondence in 1948 described the building as a shambles. and in the last stages of decay.

but she also indicated that it was being fully utilized by her household at that time. when marie beal died in 1956, she bequeathed it to the national trust for historic preservation. they had immigrated from italy to be servants in 1951, continued to live in slave quarters with their four children until 1961. making them the last residents of the building. and indeed, last private residents of lafayette square. the top right photograph shows the eldest child, claudia, in slave quarters with the last african-american resident of the building, a woman named marry that worked as a cook in marie beal's household and left the property in the early 1950s. these photographs while they sort of look like family snapshots are actually the only documentation of the interior of the slave quarters while it was

being used as a living space that we have been able to uncover. and they indicate it was fundamentally unchanged likely from original apeernls. we see plain plaster walls, simple window and door casings, and absence of any other architectural decoration. we also can see the conduits for modern improvements, raidors, plumbing, electricity had been surface mounted onto original walls and ceilings. the national trust considered a number of possible uses for the building in the early 1960s and from 1965 to 1966, the historic interior of the slave quarters was effectively demolished to create office space for the organization. during this construction, almost all interior wall partitions and you see one of those here on the right, you see how thin they were. they were effectively board walls. all of these partitions were removed. all the trim and mantles, and

the dark ghost mark of a mantle in the photograph on the left. all the trim and man tells were removed, interior plaster and doors and hardware were removed. now today, of course, we would hope these features would be seen as character defining components, worthy of conservation and preservation, but this was not part of the calculus in 1965. while national trust need for office spied guided decisions in part, it is also clear from correspondence that the interior was gutted because it wasn't deemed worthy of saving. within the field of historic preservation, it would be decades before buildings associated with slavery or other aspects of african-american history would be deemed worthy of careful conservation. once the walls were stripped clean, all the wood flooring on the first floor was removed, and chimneys and hearths were enclosed in new walls. the western end of the second story was extended to create a

continuous two story facade to the carriage house. you see that onto h street was added. during conversion of second floor into exhibit gallery in 2001, the first attempt was made by the national trust to uncover, conserve, interpret the building's remaining historic fabric. one chimney and section of wall framing were left uncovered and formed an exhibition on urban slavery. in 2008, the first section of floor, original painted floor was uncovered. this work was completed, exposing the entire original painted floor in 2010. this has a great deal to tell us. in 2011 and 2012 we continued to carefully remove the remaining modern finishes, fully exposing remaining chimneys and hearth on the first and second floors.

we learned something new about the building. paint analysis and end oh corinnology are under way, may help us pinpoint date of construction and better understand how the building changed over time. further research is under way on all those listed as enslaved people and servants i mentioned today. this remarkable building told us so much already. it has much more to tell. we need only to listen. thank you for listening today. every day at the national archives in washington, d.c., a team of six researchers from the papers of abraham lincoln project comb through a multitude of civil war-era government files searching for any documents related to the 16th president of the united states. so far, they have found 12,000 records. recently, a researcher discovered a missing page from president lincoln's second

annual message to congress along with a complete copy of the message signed in lincoln's hand. american history tv went to the archives to see these relics from the great emancipator's presidency. >> this is the e-search room which is part of the research complex here at the national archives where researchers come and view records that we serve to them. my job is to work with researchers and work with the records that we have here in our holdings here in the national archives. and i work with the records of the house and senate, which is the bulk of our holdings in the legislative archives. we have records from legislative support agencies as well, but the records of the house and senate are the bulk of our holdings going back to 1789 to the present. i've worked with the staff of the lincoln papers for -- since they've been here, and i've assisted them among my colleagues in serving them the records that they need to search for records pertaining to

abraham lincoln. >> it's a long-term editing from the abraham lincoln library and museum to locate an image and transcribe and publish all of the documents pertaining to lincoln during his lifetime. the papers of abraham lincoln began in 2001 as an expansion of the lincoln legal papers which has existed since 1985. we're systematically searching all the records series that pertain to lincoln's presidency and a handful of his papers that pertain to his one term in congress. we are trying to go through each series that might contain documents. now, some series don't contain any documents. as i tell my staff, no is an answer, and that's important for us to document that we've searched these records and haven't found anything. we're going through pretty much anything that might contain correspondence to lincoln or by lincoln. everything from military records, army, navy to

congressional records to, as i said, interior treasury and state department, post office department, any kinds of records that might have some documentation from lincoln. >> his signature is very familiar. i think most of our staff, we've kind of picked up a knack that even if something's not signed by him, we can identify his handwriting. i was searching senate records. and i was going through them. was about through with the entry i was searching. and came across a cross-file sheet that referred me to some other volumes that weren't obvious to me that they existed. and so i had one of the legislative archivists go back and pull these volumes for me. and these two on the desk are two of the ones i found. this was the first one i came across. started out, you know, obviously

it's not in the greatest shape. but analysis of 36th and 37th congress. 36th congress was the congress before lincoln took office. it was the office of buchanan. as i started leafing through, a lot of the stuff i saw was from buchanan's administration. but as i went further on through the book, eventually i came to one document that bore lincoln's signature. i have a copy of it here. and it turns out i found about 24 documents with lincoln's signature in this entry. these -- the text of these documents, in their printed form, but back in the '50s when roy basler did collective works of lincoln, he didn't have access to these manuscripts.

included is one document we only knew of one other manuscript copy, and that's stored in a church here in d.c. but as i kept leafing through the volume, i came to the end and started to just come across in random stuff, stuff that really didn't seem to fit. it just seemed like just random pieces of paper, honestly. here at the very back. i mean, this here, this calendar, obviously i didn't know what it had to do with any presidential messages, it's dated 1861. you know, turned a couple pages, and there's some sort of ledger material. and a few pages later, stuff from the 32nd -- 33rd congress, which wasn't right at all in terms of lincoln's time period. and kept turning. and then i came to this spot here where i found this document. which is the first page of lincoln's second annual message to congress.

>> we found three really remarkable things. first of all, he found a missing first page of the official copy of lincoln's second annual message to congress. this is a predecessor of our modern state of the union address. so lincoln would write a message and then send it to congress. in those days, lincoln himself would not have read it to congress as we do today. but he would have had a clerk read -- a congressional clerk would have read the message. the official message has been missing the first two pages for more than a century. it was misfiled by the senate long before the national archives received it. and we didn't know where those two pages were. >> the first thing that tipped me off was the heading. house of representatives. i knew that's how most presidential messages were transmitted. but as far as the text, i didn't immediately say oh, that's from the second annual message.

i just did a quick internet search, and the text led me to confirm that this was indeed the text. i brought it to the legislative archivist's attention, bill davis and rodney baross. and they made the decision to remove it from the volume and return it to the rest of the copy that's in the vault. >> it's wonderful that we now know where it is, and we have put that page with the rest of the second annual message in our treasury's vault where we have some of our most -- some of our most historic items. in that room also we have, for example, george washington's inaugural address. we have several items from jefferson's presidency dealing with the louisiana purchase,

lewis & clark expedition. we have things relating to world war ii, franklin d. roosevelt's day of infamy speech. we have a map that charts the incoming planes during the pearl harbor attack that was submitted to congress. and so those are among the special items. >> the second thing that he found in some ways even more remarkable is an entire second copy of that second annual message. and it is also written by a clerk but signed by abraham lincoln. so it is, in effect, an official copy as well. and then finally he found about two dozen pieces of communication between lincoln and congress. again written by clerks but all signed by lincoln that we had known about in terms of the text from printed sources but had not known where the manuscript materials were. and they were all in this one small set of records. >> it's actually labeled "interior department." in addition, even though there's some exciting parts of this message, there's also some pretty dry parts where he's

regurgitating what the secretary of state or caleb smith or whoever told him to say. so with this message, he transmitted to congress and was read by a clerk before the senate and house, there were also other reports submitted at the same time, reports from secretary of state, secretary of interior, war department, post office, postmaster general. so i think that's why this message is in this volume with the interior because following these pages are the message from the secretary of the interior. he has a lot of religious imagery in his opening. and while it please the almighty to bless us with the return to peace, we can but press on guided by the best light he gives us, trusting that in his own good time and wise way, all will yet be well.

the message is significant. mainly because it deals with emancipation and also lincoln's kind of reformulation of his thoughts about his administration during the course of the war, 1862 was a big year. a lot of change. he had issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation in september. he eventually decided to remove general mcclellan from command. and a big thing was that the democrats had gained 28 seats in the house of representatives. so he was -- lincoln, according to some historians, david donald for one, was trying to -- he might have been seen as more radical in some opinions. he was trying to come back centrist. especially what he says in this message regarding compensated gradual emancipation was a way

to try to bring more conservatives than moderates back to the fold. in addition to finding what i found in that volume, i also found another complete full copy of the message. probably his -- the best part, the most memorable words of this come from the last paragraph or so. the occasion is piled high with difficulties. we must rise with the occasion. as our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. we must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country. fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. we of cadnistration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. no personal significance or insignificance can save one another. the fiery trial which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. we say we are for union. the world will not forget that we say this. we know how to save the union. the world knows we do not know how to save it.

we here hold the power and bear the responsibility and giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free. honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve, we shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. other means may succeed. this could not fail. the way is plain, peaceful, generous, just, a way which, if followed, the world will follow forever applaud and god must forever bless. abraham lincoln, december 1st, 1862. and i'll touch on this page, the same page he touched, signed. and he spent a lot of hours crafting some of this language and to see it here before you is really something special. >> well, it's always great to have the original manuscript materials. as i mentioned, with these two dozen other pieces of correspondence between lincoln

and the senate, we had printed versions of them. but it's always good to go back and have the manuscript materials because sometimes those transcriptions are not perfect. and sometimes there are mistakes. sometimes there are omissions. and so being able to have what congress actually received from the president is always a great addition to the materials from abraham lincoln. we're in many ways replacing a publication from the 19 50s called the collective works of abraham lincoln. but that publication was just that, lincoln's works, and it was not correspondence to him. we believe the papers of abraham lincoln is obviously more comprehensive because it includes incoming correspondence as well. the other side of the conversation. but we're also finding new lincoln documents that basler and his colleagues didn't find in the 1950s. the federal government expanded greatly during the civil war. and so there is a lot more documentation than there would have been, say, for his predecessor, james buchanan. so there are lots of things militarily but even in the

regular administration going on. and so lincoln was -- and lincoln was a very active president in terms of -- he wasn't a micromanager, but he was an active president who had a lot of different things cross his desk. so there's an enormous amount of paperwork. and there were, of course, people writing to him about a wide array of issues and much of that documentation found its way into the national archives. i would say that probably the search here at the national archives will go on for several more years, four to five, perhaps, and then we have to, back in springfield, transcribe it. part of it is finding it and scanning it. but a big part is also transcribing it so that people that can't read all of the handwriting will be able to read the documents and then finally to annotate them so we to annotate them so we have the context, what the document meant at the time. because even if you can read the words, sometimes they don't make any sense if you don't understand the issues of the day. the ultimate goal is that we will publish these documents

online. it won't be right away. we will publish transkripgss. >> any human being over the age of 16 can come here to the national archives and use our holdings. more and more is available online. that takes time. digitization takes time. more and more is available through our website. we certainly encourage researchers to look at our website, see what we have, discover all of the different record books that we have here and then they are -- anyone is free to come here and search our holdings. >> for more information about this research project, visit papersofabrahamlincoln.org. they would wear garments made of home spun cloth. and this home spun cloth would

be much more rough textured, much less fine than the kinds of goods that they could import from great britain. but by wearing home spun cloth, women were visibly and vividly and physically displaying their political sentiments. >> tonight at 9:00, george mason university professor on the role of women in the revolutionary war. part of american history tv this weekend on cspan3. in fall of 2011, american history tv visited old sturbridge village, massachusetts. a living history museum that depicts early new england life. on american artifacts, we hear from costume historians that present what it was like to live and work in 19th century new england. th . >> this is not a town caught in a time warp.

it is a recreation, kind of a sampling of rural life in new england at the time when society was really transforming from the old order to the modern world we live in today. >> we're showing you the decade at 1830s. the american will he have lugs was a couple generations ago. it was as far from them as world war ii is to us. civil war is still a generation in the future. there are rumblings about slavery, but don't know what will happen in 20 or 30 years more than you and i do. there are 26 states in the union, michigan the most recent. population of the united states is probably around 17 million or so people. they do a census every ten years, so we don't quite know yet. it is probably about that. it was 13.5 million back in 1830. so it is a time when the railroad is coming in.

worcester is connected to washington, d.c. they have steam ship service from england to boston. so it is not as old fashioned as some might think, but the telegraph is patented in 1837, just to give you some things to hang your hat on. industrial revolution is well under way. so a lot of cloth that we're wearing is factory made, still sewn by ladies at home, but made in the textile mills of new england. there are over 700 of those. but most people are still living on farms, following agriculture and land, growing things like corn over here, and living in fairly modest homes. the home behind me is on the smaller end. it's one of the few we built here. that's about 600 square feet, which represents about a quarter or so of the housing stock of rural new england. so america was not only a younger nation but a poorer nation than it is now. most of our buildings are