Taking Our Place in Washington History
By Tripp Jones, Parish Archivist

You may have noticed a sign gracing the sidewalk in front of our church. The DC Heritage Tourism Coalition, in conjunction with the Downtown DC Business Improvement District and the DC Department of Public Works, installed a set of signs detailing Washington's Civil War history. The overall theme of the project is Civil War to Civil Rights. On each of the 21 signs will be this introductory statement:

"The Civil War transformed Washington, D.C. from a muddy backwater to a center of national power. Ever since, the city has been at the heart of the continuing struggle to fully realize the ideals for which the war was fought. The 21 signs that mark this trail will follow the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass and others, famous and humble, who shaped a nation and its capital city while living and working in historic downtown Washington, D.C.

This initial set of signs is divided into three geographic loops - western, central, and eastern downtown. Epiphany is stop number one on the western loop, which includes locations such as New York Avenue Presbyterian/Herald Square and the Willard Hotel. The signs can be followed as a sequence, but can also be understood as individual units. I have been working with project director Rick Busch over the past year and was able to supply some photographs that will be used on Epiphany's sign with the following text:

"Church spires dominated the skyline of the city of Washington at the time of the Civil War, symbolizing the importance of houses of worship in the religious, social, and political life of the nation's capital. While Washington still claims an extraordinary number of historic downtown churches, The Church of the Epiphany is the only original pre‑Civil War downtown church building to survive. Its walls were witness to the suffering of the wounded soldiers for whom it was a temporary hospital. Here, as in other churches, planks were laid on top of the pews to make a platform for the beds.

Episcopalians founded The Church of the Epiphany in 1842. By the time of the Civil War, it was located in a residential neighborhood of strong Southern sympathies. Washington, although the capital of the Union, was a Southern city, carved originally from the states of Maryland and Virginia. Many Washington residents had family and friends in the South, and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives often held conflicting loyalties. Even First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln had three brothers fighting for the Confederacy. Northerners accused the city of being "Secesh," short for secessionist.

"At one time, Senator Jefferson Davis, who became the president of the Confederacy, lived nearby and was an Epiphany member. Senator Judah P. Benjamin, later Davis' attorney general, and Senator Robert Toombs, who became Davis's secretary of state, lived on then fashionable F Street one block from the church.

"The Reverend Charles Hall, Epiphany's rector, balanced his Southern sympathies with loyalty to the Union. He was so persuasive about his loyalty in a meeting with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton that the latter began to attend worship services at Epiphany on a regular basis, using the former pew of Jefferson Davis. With Stanton as an example, many Union generals, too, began to attend Epiphany. President Lincoln himself came here for the funeral of General Frederick Lander of the Army of the Potomac."

A self-guided walking tour booklet, "Civil War to Civil Rights," with additional stories and images of historic downtown D.C. is available for purchase in local bookstores and hotel gift shops. Hopefully, this publicity with the new signage will send a few people our way. May they learn, as we already know, that Epiphany has a wonderful history of faithful service to downtown Washington and its doors are still open today continuing that legacy.