The Battle That Saved Washington, 160 Years Ago: July 12, 1864

Washington Summer #3

Today marks the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Stevens, on July 11-12, 1864. The battle was the closest the Confederates came to invading Washington, D.C., during the Civil War and marks the only time a sitting U.S. President has come under direct enemy fire during wartime.

In a bid to ease Union pressure on Petersburg, Virginia, Confederate military leader Robert E. Lee ordered General Jubal Early and 15,000 men to move on the U.S. Capital in early July of 1864, hoping thereby to draw off Union troops during the early stages of the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign. Sweeping up through the Shenandoah Valley and into Maryland, Early and his force met the troops of Union General Lew Wallace (later famed as the author of Ben Hur) at the Battle of Monocacy, near Frederick, on July 9. Though victorious in the battle, Early was delayed in moving directly on Washington. Coming down towards the Capital after the battle, he and his men reached Silver Spring, Maryland, and the District line on July 11.

Located in the Brightwood neighborhood on what is now Georgia Avenue, Fort Stevens lay just four miles from the White House. It was one of sixty-eight forts, ninety-three batteries, and over 800 cannon that defended Washington during the war, one of the most extensive defense networks ever created for a national capital. Fort Stevens was built on land taken from Elizabeth Proctor Thomas, who lived in a small community of Free Blacks in Northwest Washington. Thomas later and often recounted that, as she watched Union troops demolish her home to build the fort in September 1861, a tall, slender man dressed in black approached her and said, “It is hard, but you shall reap a great reward.” According to Thomas, the speaker was Abraham Lincoln.

As Early’s forces approached in July, Fort Stevens was initially defended only by a small ragbag of troops, including convalescents, as most troops had been moved out of the Capital for the campaigns south. Wallace’s delaying action at Monocacy allowed Ulysses S. Grant to move units up from Petersburg to reinforce the strategic point. Cavalry, infantry, and artillery from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Rhode Island, Maryland, West Virginia, and Maine took part in the battle to defend the Capital, which was largely a series of skirmishes over the two days.

(Fort Stevens during the Civil War; image from Library of Congress)

On July 12, Abraham Lincoln along with his wife, Mary, and some friends, went to see the fighting firsthand. Supposedly standing atop the fort’s parapet and wearing his trademark stovepipe hat, Lincoln was targeted by Confederate sharpshooters, positioned nearly a mile away, on what until recently were the grounds of Walter Reed Army Hospital. Legend has it that an officer next to Lincoln was shot down and the President himself was admonished, in the best version of the story, by future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., then a young Union officer, who yelled, "Get down, you damn fool!"

(Marker of spot where President Lincoln came under Confederate fire, Fort Stevens, July 12, 1864; photo by author, July 12, 2024.)

Repulsed by the battle-hardened Union reinforcements, Early retreated on July 12 back into Montgomery County, Maryland, and then into Virginia. Summing up the battle, Union soldier Elisha Hunt Rhodes, of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry, quipped that “Jubal Early should have attacked earlier in the morning, but Early was late.” For his part, Early is said to have remarked, “[W]e didn't take Washington but we scared Abe Lincoln like hell.”

Long abandoned, little remained of Fort Stevens by the 20th century, though Elizabeth Thomas still survived and retained ownership of the land. In the 1890s, a movement emerged to preserve or restore the Civil War defenses of Washington, as veterans of the conflict were beginning to age. As part of the McMillan Plan of 1902, a “Fort Drive” connecting key sites was proposed as a means of commemorating Washington’s defensive network. Work on Fort Stevens did not begin until the mid-1930s, when it was partially restored by the Civilian Conservation Corps, finishing up in 1938. Currently managed by the National Park Service, the site is just off of Georgia Avenue in Northwest D.C., at Quackenbos and 13th Streets.

(Partially-restored Fort Stevens; photo by author, July 12, 2024.)

On the evening of July 12, 1864, the Union casualties were laid to rest just a few hundred yards north of the fort. President Lincoln himself attended the burial ceremony and dedicated the cemetery. The Battleground National Cemetery, holding the remains of forty-one Union casualties of the battle, is in the 6600 block of Georgia Ave. Also managed by the National Park Service, it is one of the smallest National Cemeteries, but perhaps its tiny size makes more immediate the sacrifices of the men who were natives from half a dozen states, as well as England, Ireland, and Prussia.

(Battleground National Cemetery, Washington, D.C.; photo by the author, July 12, 2024.)

The invading force also suffered casualties, though their fate was not to be as cleanly settled. Scattered in various graves, it took a decade for seventeen Confederate soldiers who died in the attack to be re-interred as a group in 1874 at Grace Episcopal Church, several miles north of Fort Stevens, also on Georgia Ave., in Silver Spring, Maryland. An 1897 granite monument marking their graves was toppled in the summer of 2020 and later replaced by a smaller marker (though no longer identifying the remains as those of Confederate soldiers).

(Replacement stone of Confederate grave, Grace Episcopal Church, Silver Spring, Maryland; photo by author, July 12, 2024.)

The Battle of Fort Stevens remains not only an important part of Washington, D.C.’s history, but the causes which gave rise to its small part in the titanic struggle that convulsed America from 1861 through 1865 continue to reverberate in the neighborhoods that Washingtonians call home. The National Park Service commemorates the battle, and on Saturday, July 13, it will hold a day-long event, with historical reenactors (yes, Abraham Lincoln will once again climb the parapets, under enemy “fire”), displays of battlefield medicine, Civil War music, and speeches and lectures on the significance of the skirmish and the war.

Amidst a renewed national debate over race, perhaps a hopeful sign of how far America has traveled since those terrible days could have been seen on the 160th anniversary of the battle. Where Blues and Grays once fought a life-and-death struggle, a group of White, Black, and Hispanic volunteers on Friday together cleaned the park in preparation for the next day’s commemoration.