of 2010. to learn more about the best farm slave village, logon to nps.gov/mono. you'll find a dropdown menu for history and culture. follow link to best farm slave village. 100 years ago today. join american history tv when we are live from arlington house. the robert e. lee memorial in arlington national cemetery. it's the park's services most visited historic home. this is american history tv only on c-span 3. next american history tv visits chatham manner. built in 1771 by virginia continental congress delegate

william fitzhugh it was headquarters during the civil war and a field hospital during the battle of fredericksburg where clara barton and walt whitman tended to the wounded. it is part of fredericksburg national military park. >> you want a guided tour of the house? at least of the downstairs area? like to welcome you to chatham. my name is don. i'm the staff historian here. you've never been here before? >> no. i've been to chatham, new jersey. >> new jersey. it's a town, though. but they are named after the same person. they're both named after -- yeah, named after william pitt who was the earl of chatham who was a very popular figure because he was a member of parliament and one of the few who supported america's right to representation. and so he was a very popular man here in the colonies. and william fitzhugh obviously liked him because he'd name his

house after him. speaking of, that's him right there. he's the man who built chatham. the house was constructed here between 1768 and 1771. it was not fitzhugh's first house by any means. he had come into a great deal of wealth. he was from one of virginia's finest families. when he reached his manhood, he had already owned two houses, but they were kind of out in the country. so he wasn't getting nearly the society that he wanted in those days. in those days, of course you didn't have radios and televisions the way you entertained yourself was by talking to other people and playing cards with other people, and so you wanted to be where other people were. that's why he decided to build a house here on the outskirts of fredericksburg because this was the big city at that time. a lot of people were passing through, he could get a lot of company, hear a lot of news. he and his young wife could get their entertainment that way. so he starts construction here in 1768, moves in around 1771 and immediately puts his name up

for election in the house of burgess. the lower house of the assembly at the time. those were momentous times because that was the years immediately leading up to the american revolution. so you had in that body of people like thomas jefferson, patrick henry, richard henry lee, george washington. so fitzhugh was sitting amongst those people as one of their equals, as they are discussing some of the very momentous issues of taxation and what the relationship should be to the mother country. and fitzhugh basically fits in with the revolutionary movement quite perfectly. he is a great supporter of virginia's rights. and when virginia breaks away from the mother country, fitzhugh was involved and supports that as well. in fact, he's a member of several of the committees of safety, correspondence and for a brief time he's going to even be a member of the continental congress when that convenes up in philadelphia. he's a very important man politically as far as the offices he held.

before his life was over, he'd also be a virginia member of the house of delegates and virginia state senator. again, he never held a military role, was never governor, but other than that, he held about as high a station you could hold in a colony or state at that time. mr. fitzhugh built his house basically with two things in mind. first of all, he built it where it sat so he could get that society. he also built it on a bluff so it could impress people. if you look at it, it's not simply a dwelling, it's a statement. it's his way of saying i'm wealthy, i'm important. now that he's in his 20s, he was ready to take control of the reins of local politics. so fitzhugh built this house overlooking the bluffs, so that anybody coming out of their house, as they looked east, would see this house sitting on a hill. if you've ever been to europe and ever seen a castle sitting on a hill in the little town below, sh in that town knew who the lord of the land was, that die in that castle up there. chatham was the castle of

fredericksburg. he builds it here for that reason. he also built the house in other ways to impress people. first of all, it's made all of brick. brick was more expensive to use in those days just as it is today. if you made your house again, that's a statement that i'm a wealthy man. george washington didn't have mt. vernon made out of brick but wood and then tried to paint it so it looked like it was made out of marble or stone. he made it out of brick and he did. it's also interesting to note that this house is built in a very unusual fashion. it's only one room wide throughout its entire width. that's unusual. usually you find one room on the left, one on the right and a central stairwell. that's the efficient way of building a house. fitzhugh didn't need to be efficient because he was wealthy. he could build inefficiently. he's going to build it very long and very narrow. that has a lot of advantages. first of all it makes it look a lot bigger. this house when it was first

built only had nine rooms all together. and yet it looks like many more as you approach it from the front or back. second, it allowed light to come in from both sides. it made the house much more light and airy than it would have been otherwise. third, if you threw open the windows, you could get a nice cross ventilation going through which was important in the summer when you didn't have air conditioning. it was inefficient but a nice way to build a house if you could afford it. very few men could, but fitzhugh was one of those men. >> william fitzhugh and his wife nancy finished the place in 1771. it was classically georgian. over the decades chatham underwent many changes. the owners added porches and walkways to the front of the house, facing the rapahannack river. at least some of the plantation slave quarters were possibly beyond the ravine to the south. at tim as many as 100 slaves worked the fields, shops, stables, mill and barns at

chatham. the big house was the centerpiece of a 1300-acre farm. a mixture of fields and wood lots, barns and workshops. at one time nearly 30 outbuildings surrounded chatham. today only two original outbuildings remain. the kitchen and the laundry. precise locations of only a few others are known. in the early years chatham's fields and the slaves who worked them produced tobacco. by the time of the civil war, the fields yielded mostly grains and sustained some livestock, pigs, sheep and cows. after the civil war, chatham never recovered as an agricultural operation, and its land was gradually sold off. by 1920, the estate was reduced to just 30 acres. it became home to a secession of wealthy owners. the wartime porches were removed. the present gardens built and chatham took the form that it sustains today surrounded by 80 acres of open fields. >> so fitzhugh built this place

at the same time a lot of the other patterns of virginia planters of that period. first of all, very hospitable. you always heard of southern hospitality. that was something that really was true. people of fitzhugh's class often hosted other people at their house for days or sometimes weeks at a time. and we have letters from william fitzhugh to relatives talking about how he's got 25, 26 people staying at his house that week. then he goes on to list how many cattle he's had to slaughter. he's complaining how he has to feet these people. but then he goes on and a little footnote says by the way, i had 36 people here last week staying with me. so try to imagine, if you will, putting up with guests maybe not 36 or 24 at a time, but try to imagine putting up half a dozen people day in and day out throughout your entire life as people come, spend a few nights and go. in addition to having to run a plantation, do all of your political activities, became very weary. eventually he's going to tire of this.

as he gets older, he decides he's going to what we would today call downsize. he's going to get rid of his property, consolidate himself up in northern virginia. eventually he's going to sell chatham, move up to northern virginia where he'll be a not-too-distant neighbor of george washington. now, they knew each other pretty well. they served together back in the early days. they both had a love of horses and planting. fitzhugh would send washington seeds. try them and see if they produce a good crop for you. he also, when george washington wanted a horse, fitzhugh was known as a man who knew his horse flesh. he had been a founding member of the jockey club, had stables enough for a couple dozen horses out here. in fact, he raised his own racehorses which then he would take to annapolis and petersburg to run for these big wealthy cups. so he was known to be a very knowledgeable man when it came to horses. when george washington needed a horse, he sent a note to fitzhugh saying this is the type i need. can you keep an eye out for me. fitzhugh, very typical in that he liked horse racing.

he liked gambling. in fact, fitzhugh not only gambled on horses, he had a pool table. he had a nickname called the shark. he probably beat almost everybody who came to play with him here and probably won a lot of money by doing that. so william fitzhugh, he's going to own this house for the first 30 years or so. when he finally sells the house, it's going to come down to a family named the joneses. and they're the ones who will own the property up to the time of the civil war. just before the war, one of jones's daughters is going to marry a man named james horse lacey. he's going to actually be the proprietor of the house at the time the civil war begins. hence when you read about the house in civil war correspondents, it's always referred to as the lacey house. let's look at a picture of james horse lacey. just come on and make yourself at home anywhere. feel free to spread out.

james horse lacey married into the family just before the civil war. and in doing so became immediately one of the wealthiest men in the fredericksburg area. to show you how wealthy he was, just before the war in 1860, he had this painting done for him by a man named emanuel loitza. that may not ring a bill. he's the man who painted washington crossing the delaware. that's a famous artist and he got his picture done. he's looking very well fed in this picture. he's eating well, too. in addition to chatham, he also owned about 100 slaves. so it's not surprising that when the civil war comes that lacey's sympathies are with the south. he views abraham lincoln and the republican party as threats to the institution of slavery. and so he's very much for virginia seceding from the union and creating its own country with the other southern states. now, lacey being only in his 30s at the time decides to help out the south by becoming a

volunteer aide to some of the generals initially in this area. then later as the war becomes prolonged, he's ultimately going to formally enlist and become a quartermaster in the army, rising of ultimately to the rank of major. but he's not going to be here during the war. he's going to be sent away to south western virginia and quickly his family is going to join him there. for most of the war chatham is not occupied by the family. it's instead occupied by union troops, at least when they're in this area. now, the first union troops to come here come here in the spring of 1862 under the command of general irv mcdowell. his name may ring a name to you. he commanded the battle of the first bull run. you also may remember they didn't do overly well. he is in command of the department of the rapahannack. his role was to protect washington d.c. while the main troops went down to williamsburg and moved on richmond from the southeast. he's going to make sure the competitors don't dash into washington, d.c.

they all went south to join mcclelland or to fight mcclelland. at this point mcdowell is here with a force of 30,000 men with nobody to fight. that's a waste of troops. ultimately they decide to send mcdowell south to join mcclelland. just before this movement takes place, president abraham lincoln is going to come to chatham. he is probably the third president to come into the house prior to that time. george washington had come here as a guest of fitzhugh's, as had thomas jefferson. now abraham lincoln is coming down here to confer with mcdowell about this movement. and that's going to make him the third president, and this makes chatham the only house that we know of that both george washington and abraham lincoln entered during their lifetime. it gives the house a little extra distinction. now, just before mcdowell moves south, stonewall jackson's going to kick up his heels in the shenandoah valley and start kicking up dust. as a result, troops will be sent

to the shenandoah valley and the entire military situation is going to change. by the time the union army returns to fredericksburg in the fall of 1862, it's now under a new commander, a man named burnside. a man who's today known not so much for his generalship but for his whiskers because he had these fierce mutton chops which were called sideburns. they took his name and inverted it. burnside comes back with an army of 115,000 men intent on crossing the river, attacking lee and bringing him into battle here in the fredericksburg area. when that takes place, chatham is going to come under the union army's control and it's going to be used once again as a headquarters by several different officers. before the battle it was used by orlando wilcox, the commander of the 9th corps. during the battle itself, it's going to be the headquarters of sumner, burnside's right wing of the army. it's sumner's troops who will cross the river down below us,

enter town and attack the confederates at the infamous stone wall where there will be slaughter. during that operation sumner is in this building directing the movement of his troops while they're doing that. after the battle is over, in fact, even before the battle is over, union wounded are going to start pouring back across the river. at this point chatham will become one of many buildings in the area used as a field hospital. there were hundreds of soldiers who passed through here over the course of the next few weeks. so many they couldn't fit them all inside. they had to put some of the soldiers in tents outside because they couldn't fit them into the building. the surgeons worked tirelessly day and night in the far room of the building doing all sorts of different operations including amputations. now, they were -- they had a professional medical corps here, but they also had a few people who weren't in the corps helping them out. one in particular was clara barton, the founder of the red cross, but she did that after the civil war. during the war she was starting her humanitarian efforts then. she decided that the army needed help taking care of these

wounded soldiers at front. now, there were other women who became nurses during the war, but most of them worked in hospitals after the soldiers were sent back to those hospitals. that's where you might see female nurses usually. in this case clara decided they needed to help right here on the battlefield. that's what makes her unusual. she actually came to the front. she came here to chatham. and during the course of the battle, she was here watching the fighting. and then as the union soldiers came pouring across the river, she would ultimately help treat them here at chatham. she's not very specific in what she did here, but there's indications what she did was she was a cook. indeed that was a typical role for a woman working at an army hospital at that time. so she would have been probably out on the grounds here somewhere with a big iron pot making some sort of food for the soldiers being treated in the house. then she'd bring it in, undoubtedly talk with some of the soldiers and maybe do some other nursing sorts of things.

but she wasn't one of the ones in the operating room and cutting off the arm. she was helping with the patients, probably dishing out food to them. she'd be here for about two weeks. at the same time that clara barton is here, we also have another famous person here, and that's walt whitman. he came here on a much more private mission. his brother was in the army. and his brother had crossed the river and had been wounded. whitman is back in brooklyn and saw a casualty list that listed his father being wounded at fredericksburg. he immediately headed down to see whether he could help him. he got a pass, came to the front, much to his relief found his brother in pretty good condition who was shot through the cheek but apparently wasn't that seriously wounded and already back with his regiment. since i'm down here, how many opportunities do you get to be at the front during a war? he decided to stay on a few days. since christmas was just a week away, he said well, i'll spend

christmas with my brother and go back home. after a couple days it gets boring and whitman decided well, let me look around a little bit. see a few other things. he kind of wandered across the fields to chatham to see what a hospital was like. we don't know how long he was here. a few hours. wandering from room to room talking with the soldiers as he himself put it, talking to those who seemed to need it. and in some cases writing letters home for those who perhaps couldn't write for themselves. he in specific mentions talking with a prisoner who he held a great conversation with and later met again up in washington, d.c., after he returned north. so whitman was here for, again, just a brief period of time, but he leaves us a wonderful description of what the house was like at that time. specifically as he's leaving. he'll go out the front door of the building down the steps facing the river. he says as he goes down those steps, he said the very first thing he saw were fresh graves in the door yard right in front of the yard. these he believed were officers who had been killed whose bodies

had been temporarily buried before being shipped back home. then he's going to turn right along a path which is pretty much where our path is today. as he's walking along the front of the house, he said the next sight was a line of soldiers with blankets over them. these men had died either before or after surgery. and now been taken out to make room for other soldiers. they didn't have anybody to bury them, so they laid them out, threw a blanket over them. then as he continued down the path even farther, he came to the most gruesome sight of all, and that was what he termed an amputated -- a pile of amputated limbs, enough he said to fill a one-horse cart. you can guess how much that is. presumably, a pile, waist, shoulder high sitting right there between two old trees which are still there today and the house. and we know from other sources that that portion of the house that he was passing at that point was, in fact, the surgery. so it makes a great deal of sense that the surgeons, after cutting off an arm, leg or foot, what do you do with it? you don't drop it on the floor and trip over it, you get rid of

it. how? you toss it out the nearest window. in this case it went out the front window, landed at the foot of those trees and that's where it was when walt whitman found it. as we mentioned, a lot of these soldiers did not survive their operations. we know there were at least 135 soldiers buried on the lacey property after the civil war -- by the time the civil war was over. not a formal graveyard, just helter-skelter wherever they could find a spot for them. after the war the bodies were moved over to the national cemetery. so they're not here today except those that they missed. and in later years, people who were living here doing gardening does, in fact, find some human remains now and again. today there are still three graves out on the property that are still out there today which are marked with small little stones saying "u.s. soldier, 1862." after the battle was over and the generals moved out and the hospitals moved out, this building was used by union soldiers as what we call picket

post. the river outside the front of the house was the dividing line between the armies. for several months they were camping pretty close to one another. but you can't trust your enemy. you've got to keep an eye on them. they put these pickets or sentrys up and down the river. it was very cold that winter. doing their beat for three or four hours. when they're finished, you've got to have someplace to come back to. they'd come back to warm themselves up, make themselves a small meal, catch a nap before it was their turn. for several months this is being used not by generals or surgeons but by privates, sergeants and corporals. as the winter progressed, the army used up almost all the wood in this area. any tree that was fit for burning was cut down for miles around and used for firewood or for roads or log cabins. you can imagine you're coming off of picket duty, you're coming off duty for four hours, your feet are freezing. captain says private doaks, it's

your turn. the nearest tree is about a mile that way. and hands you a hatchet. take your blanket and call back as much as you can. you don't want to do that if there's another alternative. what's the other alternative? the wood of the house. so some of the soldiers start prying these boards off the wall, breaking them up, throwing them in the fireplaces and using them for wood. when the laceys returned in 1865, they found bare walls which the soldiers scrawled graffiti. if you step over to this window, you'll see an instance of actual civil war graffiti. if you look closely, you can see the number 1 here, a number 30 here, some more 3s or maybe 30s over here. here somebody's written number 1 and also signatures, j.w. cook of the 7th michigan cavalry wrote his name there. we have wellington wheaton of the 24th michigan -- or new york volunteers writing his name here. this sort of thing was all around the house when the laceys returned.

it's just that after the war was over, the laceys put the boards back up on the walls so you can't see it today. they removed these two just to show you this sort of thing is probably around many of the walls today if we were to once again remove the boards. when they came back to the house, they no longer found a gracious mansion with beautiful gardens, nice groves of trees. what they now found was the shell of a house. if you've ever seen "gone with the wind," remember scarlett o'hara had she returned after the battle was over? what did she find? she found the house, but it was pretty much just the shell of a building. the same thing happened here. the laceys came back, and now they had to fix up the house. so they put the remaining resources into trying to make the house once again livable. then what happened to scarlett o'hara? do you remember what happened when she got home? the tax collector came. you still had to pay taxes. if you couldn't pay your taxes, you had to raise the money somehow or lose your property. in scarlett's case, she married a rich guy. the laceys were already married

so they didn't have that option. what they did do, they had another house. they owned three properties. so they would ultimately sell this house and move into their other house. and this house would pass down to the hands of many different people, some of whom we might call carpetbaggers who came in from the outside because they could get a nice plantation very cheaply. for about 50 years, the house would pass through these various individuals. you can see if you look at this panel, here's a list of all the different people who owned the house at that time. and you can see most of them just owned it for five or ten years or so. but one thing you'll notice, the house which sold for $36,000 prior to the war and dropped down to the low $20,000s after that. it's not really changing too much in value. after the lacies fixed it up a bit, the value is staying pretty much the same. $25,000. $30,000 at the time of world war i. but then look what happens between world war i and 1931. the house jumps from $30,000 to $150,000. in that very short 15-year period.

something must have happened at that time. what happened was, the devores came here. daniel devore and his wife decided to retire here. mrs. devore was a very wealthy woman. she must have loved chatham because they poured a great deal of fortune into the house. they took this somewhat dilapidated house and restored it to one of the finest showplaces. notice this. when is that $150,000 price tag? 1931. what's happening in 1931? the height of the great depression. so that's not regular value price. that is a price during the great depression. so i don't know how many millions that would be in normal times. but that house was worth a lot of money. now, there's only one -- or very few people in america who could have afforded to buy a house for that amount of money during the height of the great depression. and one of those men was john lee pratt. he had grown up here in the fredericksburg area, just kind of a poor farm boy, had gone off to college, did very well for

himself and ultimately became an executive first in the dupont corporation and then in general motors where he ultimately became vice chairman of general motors corporation. he would retire in the middle of the 20th century and move back to fredericksburg. at that point he and his wife decided they needed a place to live. lo and behold, chatham was up for sale at that time. mrs. pratt liked it. and so john lee pratt bought it again for $150,000. and he would live here for the remainder of his life up until he gave it to us in 1975. the gardens actually were on the front of the house when the civil war began. entirely obliterated. if you look at pictures of the house, we have one in the other room, of that side of the house during the war, you'll see no vestige of a garden. the descriptions of it make it seem very magnificent. after the war was over in the 1920s, they then moved the garden to this side of the house

when they did this major restoration. called in one of the foremost -- probably the most foremost female landscape architect of today, a woman named ellen shipman, to design these gardens which were put in by the devores. we have a lot of pictures because they hired a photographer to come in and took photographers not only of the house but of the gardens. we do have a lot of nice pictures showing how luxurious the gardens were. we kind of had to strip back because we couldn't keep them up. just as a matter of interest, when the devores and the pratts were here, one of the two, i can't remember which one, but one of them had something like six or eight men who did nothing but mow the grass and take care of the gardens. they literally had gotten to the point where if a rose petal was wilting off the flowers, they'd pick it off. they had that much help here. one other interesting thing, the pratts were two entirely different personalities. it's one of those things of opposites attracting. john lee pratt was a very simple man.

he liked to go out in his old clothes. he had patches on his coats. in fact, he liked to walk. every day he'd walk across the river and play cards with buddies over in town. he dressed so shabbily that everybody thought he was a bum. they'd say who's that poor homeless man? they'd have to explain to him, that's one of the richest men in america. there's also a story how his wife one time was driving across the bridge here with her chauffeur and saw mr. pratt apparently from behind and said to the chauffeur, who's that poor shabby looking man over there? and the chauffeur said, madam, that's your husband. should we stop and pick him up? she said, "drive on." mrs. pratt liked nice things. and among the nice things she liked was russian jewelry. and she started a collection of very fine russian jewelry. and among the things she collected were russian imperial eggs. and she collected, i believe, five imperial russian eggs.

i think today if you were to try to buy one of those eggs, they'd cost apiece about $30 million. mrs. pratt had five of them. the largest collection actually outside of russia, more than the queen of england. and she had them here in this house. later on, she would donate them to the virginia state museum. and so today you can go down and see them and many of her other possessions in one of the rooms in the state museum. she predeceased mr. pratt by a number of years. mr. pratt lived with just his servants up until 1975 well into his 90s, he died. at that point he decided to give the house, through his will, to the national parks service, realizing its historical importance. thanks to the generosity of this man that we are able to show the house to you. i hope you enjoy it, please look around the building. and if you have any questions, ask us. please take advantage of those displays on the front grounds as

well >> you can watch this or other american artifacts programs any time by visiting our website, c-span.org/history. and watch "american artifacts" every sunday at 8:00 a.m., 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span3. today is the 100th anniversary of the national park service and american history tv is featuring historic sites across america. you can watch american history tv every weekend on c-span 3 and on week days during the august congressional break.