Union troops standing at attention in front of the capitol building.
Library of Congress
When National Guard members occupied the U.S. Capitol in the wake of the riot on January 6, 2021, it was the first time since the Civil War that troops had slept on the marble floors of the Rotunda and turned the shrine of democracy into a military barracks. When this photograph was taken in 1861 of Union troops standing at attention, the new, expanded Capitol building behind them was still under construction and the dome was unfinished.
The Senate and House chambers had been completed and were in use, but for several months that year, the building was crammed with soldiers. The Rotunda became a field hospital, and a bakery was installed in the basement, where 20 gas-fired ovens operated day and night, baking 58,000 loaves daily for the troops around Washington—much to the annoyance of representatives and senators. Conditions became unsanitary.
“The smell is awful,” the Capitol’s fourth architect, Thomas U. Walter, wrote to his wife that summer. “The building is like one grand water closet—every hole and corner is defiled.”
The troops were soon moved to other quarters or camps, but the bakery remained until early 1862. New construction was briefly suspended, then continued during the war as a symbol of the Union’s resilience, and in December 1863, the Statue of Freedom was placed atop the finished dome.
Bob Zeller is president of the nonprofit Center for Civil War Photography, which is devoted to collecting, preserving, and digitizing Civil War images.
