The day after their victory on the Monocacy River, Lieutenant-General Jubal Early’s Confederate Army of the Valley continued moving southeast through Maryland toward Washington. Early hoped that his raid would divert Federal forces from laying siege to Petersburg, south of Richmond. Slowed by heat and fatigue, the Confederates stopped for the night near Rockville, less than 10 miles from Washington on the Georgetown Pike.
Meanwhile, panic spread throughout both Baltimore and Washington. Northerners expecting to hear any day about the fall of Richmond were now suddenly faced with the possibility that their own capital might fall instead. Civic leaders of Baltimore wired President Abraham Lincoln accusing him of leaving their city vulnerable to Early’s Confederates. Lincoln replied, “They can not fly to either place. Let us be vigilant but keep cool. I hope neither Baltimore or Washington will be sacked.”
Federal General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant sent the Sixth and Nineteenth corps from Virginia to reinforce the Washington defenses. Grant telegraphed Lincoln offering to come in person to command the forces, and then advised, “All other force, it looks to me, should be collected in rear of enemy about Edwards Ferry and follow him (Early) and cut off retreat if possible.”
Lincoln replied, “Now what I think is that you should provide to retain your hold where you are certainly, and bring the rest with you personally and make a vigorous effort to destroy the enemy’s force in this vicinity. I think there is really a fair chance to do this if the movement is prompt.” The president concluded, “This is what I think, upon your suggestion, and it is not an order.”
Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck agreed with Grant’s plan to get into Early’s rear, but, he wrote, “we have no forces here for the field” except 100-day enlistments, “militia, invalids, convalescents from the hospitals, a few dismounted batteries, and the dismounted and disorganized cavalry sent up from James River.”
Grant replied on the night of July 10 that he had sent Major-General Horatio G. Wright’s Sixth Corps, “besides over three thousand other troops. One division of the Nineteenth Corps, six thousand strong, is now on its way to Washington.” Grant believed that Major-General David Hunter’s Federals, marching out of West Virginia, could “join Wright in rear of the enemy, with at least ten thousand men, besides a force sufficient to hold Maryland Heights.”
Grant had preparing to come up and take personal command of the Federals around Washington, but “on reflection it would have a bad effect for me to leave here,” because it would look like the Petersburg operations had been a failure. Besides, Major-General Edward O.C. Ord was being sent to command at Baltimore, and with “Ord at Baltimore and Hunter and Wright with their forces following the enemy up, could do no good. I have great faith that the enemy will never be able to get back with much of his force.”
Navy Secretary Gideon Welles had little faith in the army high command’s ability to keep the Confederates out of Washington. When a clerk told Welles that Early’s army had entered the District and was now operating around Georgetown, Welles fumed that “on our part there is neglect, ignorance, folly, imbecility in the last degree.”
Early’s army continued its advance on the 11th, moving southward down both the Georgetown Pike and the Seventh Street Pike. The troops destroyed bridges, railroad tracks, warehouses, factories, and homes along the way. Early recalled:
“This day was an exceedingly hot one, and there was no air stirring. While marching, the men were enveloped in a suffocating cloud of dust, and many of them fell by the way from exhaustion. Our progress was therefore very much impeded, but I pushed on as rapidly as possible, hoping to get to the fortifications around Washington before they could be manned.”
In Washington, officials frantically organized anyone they could muster to man the capital defenses in preparation for an invasion. Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs created a brigade from men of the Quartermaster Corps. Federals from the Army of the Potomac’s Sixth Corps began arriving as the Confederates approached Fort Stevens, Washington’s northernmost defensive work, around 1 p.m.
Major-General Alexander McD. McCook, who happened to be in the capital without a command, was sent to Fort Stevens with orders to take over the Washington defenses. McCook directed the 1,500 defenders to take positions in the trenches on the right of Fort Stevens.
As Early approached the fort, he could see the unfinished Capitol dome just six miles south. His army was now closer to the center of Washington than any other Confederate army had ever been or would ever be. The Confederates drove the Federal pickets back into the fort, but Early hesitated to launch an all-out attack due to Federal artillery, stifling summer heat, and exhaustion from marching all day. Early also observed the Federal fortifications:
“They were found to be exceedingly strong, and consisted of what appeared to be enclosed forts for heavy artillery, with a tier of lower works in front of each pierced for an immense number of guns, the whole being connected by curtains with ditches in front, and strengthened by palisades and abattis. The timber had been felled within cannon range all around and left on the ground, making a formidable obstacle, and every possible approach was raked by artillery.”
President and Mrs. Lincoln visited Fort Stevens as the Confederates approached, with one witness later writing, “While at Fort Stevens on Monday, both were imprudently exposed,–rifle-balls coming, in several instances, alarmingly near!” Lincoln watched the action from a parapet, where his tall frame made him a prime target. When a man near Lincoln was shot, a soldier called for the president to get down before he had his head knocked off.
Private Elisha H. Rhodes of the 2nd Rhode Island recorded in his diary:
“On the parapet I saw President Lincoln… Mrs. Lincoln and other ladies were sitting in a carriage behind the earthworks. For a short time it was warm work, but as the President and many ladies were looking on, every man tried to do his best… I never saw the 2nd Rhode Island do better. The rebels, supposing us to be Pennsylvania militia, stood their ground, but prisoners later told me that when they saw our lines advance without a break they knew we were veterans. The Rebels broke and fled… Early should have attacked early in the morning (before we got there). Early was late.”
Lincoln finally left the parapet, and he and the first lady went to the Sixth Street wharves where they watched troops from the Army of the Potomac debarking from their ship transports. Lincoln mingled “familiarly with the veterans, and now and then, as if in compliment to them, biting at a piece of hard tack which he held in his hand.” The Federals marched up Seventh Street to help defend Fort Stevens. After the Federal artillery drove the Confederates back, Early ordered his men to rest.
Bibliography
- Catton, Bruce, The Army of the Potomac: A Stillness at Appomattox. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1953.
- Catton, Bruce, Grant Takes Command. Open Road Media, Kindle Edition, 2015.
- Davis, Jefferson, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government: All Volumes. Heraklion Press, Kindle Edition 2013, 1889.
- Donald, David Herbert, Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, (Kindle Edition), 2011.
- Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative: Red River to Appomattox. New York: Vintage Civil War Library, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Kindle Edition), 2011.
- Lewis, Thomas A., The Shenandoah in Flames: The Valley Campaign of 1864. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1983.
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- Wert, Jeffry D. (Patricia L. Faust ed.), Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
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