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Civil War Battle of Washington City
(AKA Battle of Fort Stevens)
The Battle
of Fort Stevens, also known as the Battle of Washington City, was one of the many battles that had transpired during the
fiercely contested 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaigns.
From the north,
Fort
Stevens was the main thoroughfare into Washington
from the 7th Street Pike (now Georgia Avenue). Partially restored, the fort it is currently located at 13th and
Quackenbos Streets, NW. It was originally referred to as Fort Massachusetts
because the soldiers who constructed the fort were from Massachusetts.
It was later renamed after Brigadier General Isaac Ingalls Stevens, who had been killed at the Battle of Chantilly, Virginia,
September 1, 1862.
In the summer of 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant had Confederate General Robert E. Lee in a deathtrap around Richmond and Petersburg. When General Grant had moved south, he stripped Washington, D.C. of many well
trained troops. As a result of July 1864, there were only 9,000 troops to defend the city; down from more than 23,000
that had been there the previous year. The troops that remained were primarily poorly trained reserves. General
Lee sought desperately a way out of his predicament around Petersburg. He decided to order General Jubal A. Early with
about 20,000 troops, aka the Army of the Valley, to strike at Washington; since his spies had reported it was
poorly defended.
"We burned the palatial
mansion of Postmaster-General Blair, in retaliation for the burning, by [Gen. David] Hunter, of Governor Letcher's residence
at Lexington, Va., one month before." Lt. Col. W. W. Stringfield, Thomas' Legion of Cherokee Indians and Highlanders, while campaigning with Gen. Jubal Early in the Shenandoah Valley
| Gen. Early and "Army of the Valley" Movements |
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| (Monocacy National Battlefield Map) |
On June 12, General Early started his march from behind Petersburg, and by July 9, he was at Frederick,
Maryland, where he demanded and received $200,000 to spare the city. The same day, General Early defeated Union General
Lew Wallace at the Monocacy River. General Wallace's defeat, subsequently, became a semi-victory for the Union because
he was able to delay Early's advance for a day. On July 10, Early encamped at Rockville, Maryland, 10 miles from Fort Stevens.
(Gen. Jubal Early's Route to Washington and Fort Stevens)
As a result of the rapid and successful movement of General Early, the War Department seemed paralyzed
and gave no orders. General Grant understood the situation and forwarded the 25th New York Cavalry, which left City Point,
Virginia, on July 7 and reached Fort Stevens midnight of July 10. Also on the 7th, the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the VI Corps, commanded by General Horatio G. Wright,
departed City Point. A few hours later, General W. H. Emory, with part of the XIX Corps (just returning from New Orleans to
join Grant) departed Fort Monroe for Washington.
By noon of July 11, General Early was in full view of Fort Stevens, reconnoitered the area, and found
the fort poorly manned. During the afternoon, General Early tried to find a weak spot in the line, but supporting Fort
Stevens were the guns from Fort DeRussy on the left and Fort Slocum on the right.
When examining the works at daylight on July 12, Early saw the parapets lined with seasoned troops; he then
decided to abandon the idea of capturing Washington. By nightfall of July 12, the Rebels withdrew and the Union Capital had
been saved.
Sources: National Park Service; Library of Congress; Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies; Diary and Memoirs of Lt. Col. William Williams Stringfield
Recommended
Reading: Season of Fire: The Confederate
Strike on Washington (Hardcover: 300 pages).
Editorial Review from Booklist: In 1864, Confederate General Jubal Early, outraged by Union depredations
in the Shenandoah Valley by the Federals, launched a bold but futile raid on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. With this event as the central focus of
his narrative, Judge has written a fascinating and riveting account of the men in battle. He masterfully maintains both dramatic
tension and historical accuracy by relating the events through the memoirs of the actual participants. Judge explains the
military maneuvers in language that laypersons can easily grasp, and his portrayals of the key participants breathe life into
the account. Continued below...
Among the more
memorable key-players are Early, the daring general of the valley; Lew Wallace (who would later author “Ben Hur”),
who attempts to block Early's advance; and George Davis, from Vermont, who was awarded the Medal of Honor during this
fiercely contested campaign. This is a fine recounting of a relatively obscure but quite interesting series of events, and
both the general reader and Civil War aficionados will enjoy it. The book also contains sixty-one illustrations.
Recommended Reading: Jubal Early's Raid on Washington.
Description: "Cooling has produced what is sure to become the definitive scholarly account of the campaign. Drawing on a vast
array of sources, including seldom-used veterans' accounts, Cooling presents a comprehensive campaign study from origins to
aftermath. Not only does Cooling masterfully describe the specific movements of the opposing forces, but he also never loses
sight of the wider context in which the campaign was fought. Continued below…
In fact, Cooling's greatest contribution may be his clear demonstration that Grant was fooled by Early's
operations and took an uncommonly long time to react to a very serious threat." - American Historical Review." About the Author:
B.F. Cooling is chief historian of the Department of Energy and has won the Douglas Southall Freeman Award and the Fletcher
Pratt Award for best Civil War history book.
Recommended
Reading: Desperate Engagement: How
a Little-Known Civil War Battle Saved Washington, D.C.,
and Changed American History. Description: The Battle of Monocacy, which took place on the blisteringly hot
day of July 9, 1864, is one of the Civil War’s most significant yet little-known battles. What played out that day in
the corn and wheat fields four miles south of Frederick, Maryland, was a full-field engagement between 12,000 battle-hardened
Confederate troops led by the controversial Jubal Anderson Early, and 5,800 Union troops, many of them untested in battle,
under the mercurial Lew Wallace, the future author of Ben-Hur. When the fighting ended, 1,300 Union troops were dead, wounded
or missing or had been taken prisoner, and Early---who suffered 800 casualties---had routed Wallace in the northernmost Confederate
victory of the war. Two days later, on another brutally hot afternoon, Monday, July 11, 1864, Early sat astride his horse
outside the gates of Fort Stevens in the
upper northwestern fringe of Washington, D.C.
He was about to make one of the war’s most fateful, portentous decisions: whether or not to order his men to invade
the nation’s capitol. Early had been on the march since June 13, when Robert
E. Lee ordered him to take an entire corps of men from their Richmond-area encampment and wreak havoc on Yankee troops in
the Shenandoah Valley, then to move north and invade Maryland.
If Early found the conditions right, Lee said, he was to take the war for the first time into President Lincoln’s front
yard. Also on Lee’s agenda: forcing the Yankees to release a good number of troops from the stranglehold that Gen. U.S.
Grant had built around Richmond. Continued below...
Once manned
by tens of thousands of experienced troops, Washington’s ring of forts and fortifications that
day were in the hands of a ragtag collection of walking wounded Union soldiers, the Veteran Reserve Corps, along with what
were known as hundred days’ men---raw recruits who had joined the Union Army to serve as temporary, rear-echelon troops.
It was with great shock, then, that the city received news of the impending rebel attack. With near panic filling the streets,
Union leaders scrambled to coordinate a force of volunteers. But Early did not pull the trigger. Because his men were exhausted
from the fight at Monocacy and the ensuing march, Early paused before attacking the feebly manned Fort Stevens, giving Grant
just enough time to bring thousands of veteran troops up from Richmond. The men arrived at the eleventh hour, just as Early
was contemplating whether or not to move into Washington.
No invasion was launched, but Early did engage Union forces outside Fort
Stevens. During the fighting, President Lincoln paid a visit to the fort,
becoming the only sitting president in American history to come under fire in a military engagement. Historian Marc Leepson shows that had Early arrived in Washington one day earlier, the ensuing havoc easily could have brought about a different
conclusion to the war. Leepson uses a vast amount of primary material, including memoirs, official records, newspaper accounts,
diary entries and eyewitness reports in a reader-friendly and engaging description of the events surrounding what became known
as “the Battle That Saved Washington.”
Recommended
Reading: Reveille in Washington,
1860 - 1865. Description: Winner of the 1942 Pulitzer Prize in History, it is an authentic, scholarly description of life in Washington during the Civil War, written in a highly readable style. The "star" of the book
is, indeed, the city of Washington D.C. Many players
walk across the D.C. stage, and Leech's research paints vivid portraits not seen before about the Lincolns, Walt Whitman,
Andrew Carnegie, Winfield Scott, John Wilkes Booth, and many others. It's the "Capitol" that you have never really seen
or heard that much about… It's a scrappy, dusty, muddy, unfinished city, begging for respect. Washington City, as it was called then, was
both a respite for Union soldiers, as well as the Union Army’s “prostitution headquarters.” From the so-called
'highlife to the lowlife', the politician to the pauper, all receive their respectful, or rightful, place in this delightful
but candid prose.
Recommended
Reading: Freedom Rising: Washington
in the Civil War. Description: In this luminous portrait of wartime Washington, Ernest B. Furgurson–author of the widely acclaimed Chancellorsville
1863, Ashes of Glory, and Not War but Murder--brings to vivid life the personalities and events that animated the Capital
during its most tumultuous time. Continued below...
Here among
the sharpsters and prostitutes, slaves and statesmen are detective Allan Pinkerton, tracking down Southern sympathizers; poet
Walt Whitman, nursing the wounded; and accused Confederate spy Antonia Ford, romancing her captor, Union Major Joseph Willard.
Here are generals George McClellan and Ulysses S. Grant, railroad crew boss Andrew Carnegie, and architect Thomas Walter,
striving to finish the Capitol dome. And here is Abraham Lincoln, wrangling with officers, pardoning deserters, and inspiring
the nation. Freedom Rising is a gripping account of the era that transformed Washington
into the world’s most influential city.
Recommended
Reading: The
Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 (Hardcover: 252 pages) (McFarland & Company). Description: A significant part of the Civil War was fought in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, especially in 1864. Books
and articles have been written about the fighting that took place there, but they generally cover only a small period of time
and focus on a particular battle or campaign. Continued below...
This work covers
the entire year of 1864 so that readers can clearly see how one event led to another in the Shenandoah Valley and turned once-peaceful
garden spots into gory battlefields. It tells the stories of the great leaders, ordinary men, innocent civilians, and armies
large and small taking part in battles at New Market, Chambersburg, Winchester, Fisher’s
Hill and Cedar Creek, but it primarily tells the stories of the soldiers, Union and Confederate,
who were willing to risk their lives for their beliefs. The author has made extensive use of memoirs, letters and reports
written by the soldiers of both sides who fought in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864.
Recommended
Reading: The
Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 (Military Campaigns of the Civil War) (Hardcover: 416 pages) (The University
of North Carolina Press). Description: The 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign
is generally regarded as one of the most important Civil War campaigns; it lasted more than four arduous months and claimed
more than 25,000 casualties. The massive armies of Generals Philip H. Sheridan and Jubal A. Early had contended for immense
stakes... Beyond the agricultural bounty and the boost in morale to be gained with its numerous battles, events in the Valley
would affect Abraham Lincoln's chances for reelection in November 1864. Continued below...
The eleven
essays in this volume reexamine common assumptions about the campaign, its major figures, and its significance. Taking advantage
of the most recent scholarship and a wide range of primary sources, contributors examine strategy and tactics, the performances
of key commanders on each side, the campaign's political repercussions, and the experiences of civilians caught in the path
of the armies. The authors do not always agree with one another, but, taken together, their essays highlight important connections
between the home front and the battlefield, as well as ways in which military affairs, civilian experiences, and politics
played off one another during the campaign.
Try the Search
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