Fort Stevens and Battleground National Cemetery

Washington DC did actually have one Civil War battle during July 11-12, 1864. The Battle of Ft. Stevens was relatively small by the standards of the day, but it had the distinction of having Abraham Lincoln visit the battle while it was taking place. This made him the only sitting President to be fired upon by a hostile army. It also represented the last effort on the part of the Confederacy to attack the Union capital.

Fort Stevens, Washington D.C.

Fort Stevens is six miles north of the National Mall. And the fact that there isn’t a great deal to see there, it’s not what one would call a “must see” destination Washington except for the more serious Civil War buffs. What’s unusual about the site is that it now sits in the middle of a very urbanized area of densely packed single family homes. The recently vacated Walter Reed Army Medical Center is just to the North of the fort and sits on much of the land where the Confederate forces where aligned during the battle. In 1864 the area was all farmland.

What visitors will see are some significant earthworks with wooden defensive walls and several large reproduction Civil War era cannons. Towards the central part of the wooden ramparts is a piece of granite with a bronze bas-relief plaque commemorating Lincoln having come under fire during his visit.

Starting after the Northern defeat at First Manassas, the Union military got serious about defending Washington from a potential Confederate attack. Over the course of the war, the military constructed 68 forts in a ring around Washington. Eighteen of the sites of these forts and one cemetery (with Fort Stevens dead) are administered by the National Park Service. They are called the the Civil War Defenses of Washington by the National Park Service. Five other fort locations are administered by local governments: one in Maryland and four in Virginia.

In the summer of 1864 U.S. Grant was starting to pin the Confederate Army along a line from Richmond to Petersburg in Virginia. In an effort to relieve some of the pressure on his army and to make another invasion attempt, Robert E. Lee sent Jubal Early with 20,000 Confederate soldiers into Maryland with a plan to attack Washington. Early’s troops defeated a smaller Union force at Monocacy in Maryland on July 9 and were nearing Fort Stevens on the 11^th. Union officers collected up wounded soldiers, clerks and anyone they could find to help bolster the troops at the forts and Grant scrambled to send troops from Virginia when he realized that the Washington forts needed more manpower.

Lincoln visited Fort Stevens and the story from the battle is that some officer yelled something like “get down you fool” to Lincoln when the shooting started. The story wasn’t written down until the 1920’s so historians are not convinced it actually happened. Early realized that the Washington forts were more heavily defended than he anticipated, called off his attack and headed back to Virginia. There were some 700 casualties combined.

When visiting Fort Stevens, one should also make the short walk to the Battleground National Cemetery, which is about 5 blocks north on Georgia Avenue. 40 Union dead from the Ft. Stevens conflict are buried there and there are several larger monuments from units that participated in Washington’s defense. 

Links: National Park Service Fort Stevens site

          NPS Civil War Defenses of Washington site

          NPS Battleground National Cemetery site