Company K, 3rd Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, by guns of Fort Stevens

Company F, 3d Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, in Fort Stevens

House near Fort Stevens showing effect of shot fired during Early's attack on Washington

Fort Stevens where Lincoln stood under fire

Fort Stevens

During the Civil War, the nation's capital was ringed by a network of 68 forts and 93 gun batteries which were designed to protect it from Confederate attack from all sides. Two concentrated Confederate invasions in 1862 and 1863 had threatened Washington, but the only real attempt to enter the capital occurred in July 1864. General Jubal Early left Richmond with 10,000 troops on June 12. He marched west to the Shenandoah Valley, northeast through the valley to Maryland. He defeated Union troops at the Battle of Monocacy and then marched southeast to Washington where defense forces were pulled together from invalids, mechanics, clerks and veteran troops rushed to the site from the Richmond front.

According to Sergeant Smith Stimmel, a member of the president's bodyguard, "The 11th of July was an anxious day for the President, and for all who knew the situation. During the afternoon of that day the President drove out along the line of some of the forts on the north to investigate the condition of things for himself. I was with the escort that accompanied him on his rounds that day, and it looked to me as though the chances for a scrap were mighty good. I did not see why the Confederates did not make an attack then."1 As President Lincoln left the White House, he was accosted by Congressman John A. Bingham who inquired if he was fleeing from the approaching Confederate army: "Oh, no, but there is excitement among our boys, and I go out to encourage them."2 The President observed Early's attack on Fort Stevens on the outskirts of the city, as recorded by John Hay in his diary on July 11, 1864:
The President concluded to desert his tormentors today & travel around the defenses. [Quincy] Gillmore arrived & reported. Wright & staff also came in.

At three o'clock P.M. the President came in bringing the news that the enemy's advance was at Ft Stevens on the 7th Street road. He was in the Fort when it was first attacked, standing upon the parapet. A soldier roughly ordered him to get down or he would have his head knocked off. I can see a couple of columns of smoke just north of the White House. It is thought to be Silver Spring in flames -- I was at Mr. Blair's this evening: Fox says Gen. Wright tells him that Silver Spring is not burnt.
The President is in very good feather this evening. He seems not in the least concerned about the safety of Washington. With him the only concern seems to be whether we can bag or destroy this force in our front.

Part of Canby's troops are here.

Gillmore has been placed in command of them. Aleck McCook is in charge of the defences. There is a great plenty of Generals. Meigs has gone out for a spurt.3


By July 12, regular Union troops from the Sixth Corps had arrived to confront Early's Confederate veterans. Mr. Lincoln had gone down to greet them as they came off boats on the Potomac River. Later, Mr. Lincoln went to Fort Stevens (located in Northwest Washington at the current intersection of Thirteenth Street and Quackenbos Streets). According to Stimmel, "he made a bee line for Fort Stevens, about as fast as the old coach horses could take him, and arrived before the whole of the Sixth Corps got there. On arriving at the Fort, the President left his carriage and took his position behind the earthworks of the Fort, which left us at liberty for the time being to put in the time as we saw fit." The President stood on the ramparts of Fort Stevens, next to an officer who was wounded. As one soldier reported the incident: "Old Abe and his wife was in the Fort at the time and Old Abe and his doctor was standing up on the parapets and the sharpshooter that I speak of shot the doctor through the left thigh, and Old Abe ordered our men to fall back."4 Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. allegedly shouted at the President: "Get down, you damn fool!" Before the President left the fort, he said good-bye to the future Supreme Court justice, adding, "I'm glad to see you known how to talk to a civilian." John Hay's July 12, 1864 diary entry read:
The President seemed in a pleasant and confident humor today. The news from Sherman, if confirmed, is good -- that the enemy intend to desert Atlanta.

The President again made the tour of the fortifications; was again under fire at Ft Stevens; a man was shot at his side.

The militia of the District are offering their services and the Department clerks are also enrolling themselves. In Judge Lewis' office 87 men enlisted and organized themselves in 15 minutes.

Last night the President's guard of Bucktails was sent to the front.

Mr Britton A. Hill called this evening, in great trepidation, and said he was apprehensive of a sudden attack on the Navy Yard.5


One Ohio soldier later remembered July 12: "President Lincoln visited the fort that afternoon accompanied by Senator [Zachariah Chandler] of Michigan. The enemy was firing lively from the bushes in front of the fort and it was dangerous for any person to look over the parapet. Chandler hugged close to the parapet, but the President was bound he would look over and see what was going on. Soon a sharpshooter fired at him, and he dodged, in doing so tipped over the pass box on which he was sitting and tumbled down. The ball fired at him struck one of the large guns, glanced back and went through a [surgeon's] soldier's leg on the look-out. Lincoln gathered himself up and laughing said: 'that was quite a carom.' I was standing back of him at the time and was curious to know what a carom meant, and so I asked one of the boys versed in billiards, and he told me...Some of those standing by thought the president was given to a little too much levity and that the remark was a little too jocose for the occasion, but he did not realize what had happened until after he said it.".6

A more complete version of the President's day is found in the diary entry of Navy Secretary of Gideon Welles, who himself had visited the battle front on both July 11 and July 12. After the second day, Welles wrote:
Went to the President's at 12, being day of regular Cabinet-meeting. Messrs. Bates and Usher were there. The President was signing a batch of commissions. Fessenden is absent in New York. Blair informs me he has been early at the council chamber and the President told him no matters were to be brought forward. The condition of affairs connected with the Rebels on the outskirts was discussed. The President said he and Seward had visited several of the fortifications. I asked where the Rebels were in force. He said he did not know with certainty, but he thought the main body at Silver Spring.

I expressed a doubt whether there was any large force at any one point, but that they were in squads of from 500 to perhaps 1500 scattered along from the Gunpowder to the falls of the Potomac, who kept up an alarm on the outer rim while the marauders were driving off horses and cattle. The President did not respond farther than to again remark he though there must be a pretty large force in the neighborhood of Silver Spring.

I am sorry there should be so little accurate knowledge of the Rebels, sorry that at such a time there is not a full Cabinet, and especially sorry that the Secretary of War is not present. In the interviews which I have had with him, I can obtain no facts, no opinions. He seems dull and stupefied. Others tell me the same.
It was said yesterday that the mansions of the Blairs were burned, but it is to-day contradicted.

Rode out this P.M. to Fort Stevens. Went up to the summit of the road on the right of the fort. There were many collected. Looking out over the valley below, where the continual popping of the pickets was still going on, though less brisk than yesterday, I saw a line of our men lying close near the bottom of the valley. Senator [Benjamin Wade] came up beside me. Our views corresponded that the Rebels were few in front, and that our men greatly exceeded them in numbers. We went together into the fort, where we found the President, who was sitting in the shade, his back against the parapet towards the enemy.

Generals Wright and McCook informed us they were about to open battery and shell the Rebel pickets, and after three discharges an assault was to be made by two regiments who were lying in wait in the valley.

The firing from the battery was accurate. The shells that were sent into a fine mansion occupied by the Rebel sharpshooters soon set it on fire. As the firing from the fort ceased, our men ran to the charge and the Rebels fled. We could see them running across the fields, seeking the woods on the brow of the opposite hills. It was an interesting and exciting spectacle. But below we could see here and there some of our own men bearing away their wounded comrades. I should judge the distance to be something over three hundred yards. Occasionally a bullet from some long-range rifle passed above our heads. One man had been shot in the fort a few minutes before we entered.

As we came out of the fort, four or five of the wounded men were carried by on stretchers. It was nearly dark as we left. Driving in, as was the case when driving out, we passed fields as well as roads full of soldiers, horses, teams, mules. Camp-fires lighted up the woods, which seemed to be more eagerly sought than the open fields.

The day had been exceedingly warm, and the stragglers by the wayside were many. Some were doubtless sick, some were drunk, some weary and exhausted. Then men on horseback, on mules, in wagons as well as on foot, batteries of artillery, caissons, an innumerable throng. It was exciting and wild. Much of life and much of sadness. Strange that in this age and country there is this strife and struggle, under one of the most beneficent governments which ever blessed mankind and all in sight of the Capitol.7


"As the sun was sinking in the west, the Confederates ceased firing and beat a retreat," Sergeant Stimmel later wrote. "Our bugle sounded, which meant that the President was ready to return to the city."8


Footnotes

    1. Smith Stimmel, Personal Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, p. 56.
    2. Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, editors, Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, p. 31.
    3. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, editors, Inside Lincoln's White House: The complete Civil War Diary of John Hay.
    4. John H. Cramer, Lincoln Under Enemy Fire, p. 27.
    5. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, editors, Inside Lincoln's White House: The complete Civil War Diary of John Hay.
    6. Cramer, Lincoln Under Enemy Fire, p. 43-43.
    7. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Volume II, p. 74-75.
    8. Stimmell, p. 64-65.

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