150 Years Ago: April 13

On April 13, 1865, the City of Washington celebrated the end of the Civil War by giving workers a holiday. Marching bands paraded through the streets, and the people of the city followed the bands as they marched here and there.

At night, candles were placed in nearly every window of every building, illuminating the entire city. President and Mrs. Lincoln rode out in a buggy to view the lights of the city. Julia Shepherd, a young woman visiting Washington, described the scene in a letter to her father:

Thursday evening we drove to the city, and all along our route was one blaze of glorious light. From the humble cabin of the contraband to the brilliant White House light answered light down the broad avenue. The sky was ablaze with bursting rockets. Calcium lights shone from afar on public buildings. Bonfires blazed in the streets and every device that human Yankee ingenuity could suggest in the way of mottoes and decoration made noon of midnight.

In this context, contraband refers to a slave who had escaped to or had been brought within Union lines.

The celebration in the nation's capital was described the next day in the New York Times:

The illumination of the city this evening is general and brilliant, utterly beyond anything ever before attempted here, and has drawn thousands upon thousands of persons upon the streets. Pennsylvania-avenue is a line of light from First-street to Twenty-second-street, a distance of nearly two miles, there being but very few houses on either side in that whole extent which are not illuminated. Several other streets, for distances of half a mile each, also present an almost continuous line of illumination. All the public buildings are of course illuminated and decorated with flags, lanterns, &c., that of the Navy Department being unquestionably the finest. Hundreds and hundreds of private houses are illuminated and decorated in the most brilliant and elegant manner, and mottoes and transparencies and flags everywhere abound. The New-York Times office has attracted much attention, both from the brilliancy of its illumination and the profuse and tasteful manner in which it is decorated, with flags both inside and outside. The other newspaper offices have also been more or less illuminated. Bands of music have been parading the streets and playing at the public buildings all the evening, and there has been a constant blaze of rockets, Roman candles and other fireworks in all parts of the city.

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