If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.
— A. Lincoln, 1863Establishment of the "Military Asylum"
In this section...
The Armed Forces Retirement Home was established on March 3, 1851, when the U.S. Congress passed legislation to found "a military asylum for the relief and support of invalid and disabled soldiers of the army of the United States." Events leading to the establishment of a military asylum had been building for a number of years, beginning with the first recommendation for a soldiers' home in November 1827, when Secretary of War James Barbour suggested the founding of an Army Asylum in his Annual Message to the President.
...The institution bearing the above name is a large, fine building, built of stone, in castelated style, about two miles and a half from Washington, due north. The grounds are extensive and beautiful, and belong to the Government, which erected the large central building for disabled, homeless soldiers of the regular service, of whom a large number here rest from the services in the field. Near the central building are several two-story cottages... in the Gothic style, and occupied by the Surgeon in charge, the Adjutant General and other functionaries, and one is occupied during the Summer by the President and his family.
- Noah Brooks, journalist, July 4, 1863.1
The Home is, however, the product of the combined efforts of three men to provide an honorable and secure retirement for American war veterans. Those men were Brevet Major General Robert Anderson, Fort Sumter's commanding officer at the outbreak of the Civil War; Senator Jefferson Davis, who repeatedly introduced legislation to found the Home; and General Winfield Scott, who contributed significant funds. In 1848, in lieu of ransacking Mexico City, Gen. Scott received $150,000. Scott earmarked $100,000 of this tribute money for the establishment of the home.
Several sites for the "military asylum" were considered, and finally the estate of George Riggs, together with an adjoining tract, was selected.
Several days were spent looking at sites and the choice finally came down to Mr. Smith's place and a farm offered by Mr. George W. Riggs, who not only offered his land of somewhat under two hundred acres but also offered to guarantee the title of the adjoining land of Mr. Charles Scrivner, the Mount Juliet tract of about 58 acres. After a series of meetings, the Board voted to buy the Riggs farm together with the Scrivner tract. On this land the Home now stands.
- Colonel Goode.2
The U.S. government paid Riggs, a notable Washington banker, about $57,000 for the 256-acre parcel. The U.S. government purchased additional land, totaling about 207 acres, from the 1850s to the 1870s.
1Noah Brooks, 4 July 1863, in Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 57.
2Cited in Geier Brown Renfrow Architects, Historic Structure Report: Anderson Cottage, 20 February 1985, 21.
3Geier Brown Renfrow Architects, 20-24.