29.2:R59/22
0648
Rock Creek Park
District of Columbia
NATIONAL
PARK
SERVICE
The Battle of Fort Stevens
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
LIBRARIES
NOV 25 2009
DEPOSITED BY
MTOA OTATOOP AAARDIOA
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 08543 4374
SUDOCS
NOLLO31701
3
us
The Battle of Fort Stevens and the Defenses of Washington
Rock Creek Park
disturbing apprehension for the
safety of Baltimore and
Washington."
On July 11
and 12,
1864, the
nation's
capital came
under
attack. Guns
boomed in
the northern
suburbs as
Confederate
troops under
Jubal Early
connected by over 20 miles of rifle
trenches, making Washington the
most heavily fortified city in the
world. Remains of these
fortifications can be seen on
National Park Service land at Fort
Stevens, Fort Totten, Fort Marcy, and
Fort DeRussy.
north. Confederate Lieutenant
General Jubal Early, in command of
14,000 soldiers, marched down the
Shenandoah Valley and forded the
Potomac at Shepherdstown on July
5, 1864. On July 9 the Confederates
defeated a small Union force along
the Monocacy River at Frederick,
Determined to press his advantage,
Early pushed on, arriving in front of
Fort Stevens about noon on July 11.
Here he noted that the fort seemed
undermanned, but, impressed by
the "very formidable character of
the works," he did not order an
immediate assault. Some of his men
thought he had made a mistake.
One wrote later, "a volley, a Rebel
yell, and a vigorous charge would
have given us Washington."
Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal
Early.
Piling
CA
probed
Hepburn
White
Fort DeRussy
Moreland
Moreland
Battery
FORT DE RUSSY
Battery Sineade
Union defenses. But the city had
been hardened by three long years
of war, and neither the soldiers
defending the capital nor its
inhabitants panicked. A makeshift
force was thrown together to man
the capital's defenses, and this
assemblage of wounded men
recruited from hospitals, War
Department clerks, elderly veterans,
and heavy artillerymen held off the
attackers until reinforcements
arrived from the Union army at
Petersburg. After two days of
fighting, the Confederates slipped
back the way they had come.
a cavalryman named Major William
Fry. Fry made the rounds of the
city's military hospitals and
assembled nearly 500 troopers by
commandeering every man well
enough to ride. They requisitioned
horses and set out on the road to
Rockville, Maryland, where they met
the Confederates' own
horsemen and skirmished all
day on the 10th. These
cavalrymen kept
commanders in Washington
well informed about Early's
movements, allowing
reinforcements to be sent to
threatened areas around the
city. Meanwhile the Veteran
Reserve Corps was called to
arms, a force of older men,
semi-invalids, and clerks from
the War Department, most
of whom had not been in
combat since the Mexican
War. After a great deal of
command confusion -
reading accounts of these
days, it sometimes seems
that there were more
generals in Washington than
soldiers - Major General
Alexander McCook was put
command of the defense. Grant had
sent two divisions of veterans
northward by ship, so McCook's
tactic was to delay Early's
Confederates until the
reinforcements arrived. The
newspapers reveled in the city's
calm response, one editor
remarking, "The annual invasion of
Maryland, which, next to the
weather, supplies the 'sensation' of
this week, does not excite any very
| Видеry Kimkairacy
Battery
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Battery
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Fort Stevens in 1863, showing the Crews by their Guns.
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A Civil War Map Showing Fort DeRussy and the Other Defenses around Rock Creek.
-
The Fortifications of Washington
Early's Raid
and then advanced toward
Washington. At that time, few
soldiers manned the defenses of
Washington because Grant had
stripped the garrison to reinforce his
army in Virginia.
Washington was poorly defended
when the Civil War began in 1861,
and after Union forces had been
routed at the First Battle of
Manassas, concern grew about an
attack on the capital. The new
Union commander, Major General
George McClellan, decided that the
city should be fortified. When
completed, the city's defenses
totaled 68 forts and 93 batteries
The defenses of Washington had
been built during the early part of
the war, when a Union defeat
seemed a real possibility, but they
saw no fighting until July 1864,
when victory seemed close at hand.
Grant's army had bogged down in
front of Petersburg, and Lee sought
to take advantage of the situation
by launching a bold raid on the
Washington seemed to be at Early's
mercy, but the city had been at war
for three years and Union veterans
coolly set about organizing a
defense. Among the wounded
soldiers recuperating in the city was
Fort Stevens in 1863, Showing the Felled Trees arranged to Slow Down Attackers.

The Battle of Fort Stevens
from a farm north of Fort DeRussy.
According to their commander, "They
advanced gallantly until very near the
building, when they were opened on by the
enemy from behind a breastwork of logs
and brush. They were compelled to retire,
the enemy being in such force."
a
But Early suspected that Union
reinforcements were on the way, and he
knew that his own men were tired from a
long march on a hot, dry day. He wanted to
make a careful reconnaissance, give his
men a rest, and form up his strung-out
a
units properly for the attack. As it turned
out, he was probably wise to hesitate. At
the very moment he reached Fort Stevens,
steam ships carrying thousands of Grant's
veterans were docking downtown, to the
cheers of the residents. Had Early attacked
at noon he might have found getting out
of the city much harder than getting in.
Early met with his division commanders
during the morning of the 12th and
decided to return to Virginia the next day.
When heavy fighting broke out in the
afternoon, preparations for the withdrawal
were already under way, and the "stubborn
resistance" put up by the Confederate
infantry had the character of a rear-guard
action. The Confederates pulled out during
the night, and by the morning of the 13th
the Battle of Fort Stevens was over.
certainly the men firing
from this spot were
Confederate pickets
working their way into the
valley from the east,
probing for a way around
Fort Stevens. The fired
bullets and shell fragments
show that they did not
have an easy time of it. The
fired bullets were a mixture
of .58 caliber rounds of the
type used in the war's most
common infantry arms and
.52 caliber rounds from
Sharps and Burnside
carbines. These carbines
were most often used by
the cavalry, and we know
that many of the Union
pickets at the opening of
the battle were dismounted
cavalrymen.
was "smartly done" by 1:30 in the
afternoon. The Confederates turned away
from Fort Stevens and probed its flanks for
a weak spot, sending skirmishers into the
Rock Creek valley. Fighting was under way
in front of Fort DeRussy, west of Rock
Creek, by 2:30 P.M. Later in the evening a
whole brigade of the Veteran Reserve
pushed the Confederate skirmishers back
from Fort DeRussy. "The regiment promptly
formed their line and advanced, firing
rapidly, and, under a heavy fire, driving the
enemy's right back, occupying their
ground" along a ridge north of the fort.
The Confederates
formed a line along
the next ridge to the
north, and both sides
held their positions as
night fell. The
Confederates also
tried the east side of
Fort Stevens, but they
had no more luck in
that direction. If they
were to win passage
into Washington, they
would have to do so
by assaulting the
Union forts.
S
During the afternoon of July 12, Abraham
Lincoln visited Fort Stevens and stood up on
the parapet to get a view of the fighting.
Bullets flew around him, and a Union
officer who did not recognize him snapped
at him to get down before he was killed.
Lincoln did get down, but he had just
become the only sitting U.S. president to
come under enemy fire in wartime.
Soldiers' Drawing of the Magazine at Fort DeRussy in 1862.
Remains of the Battle
Meanwhile, the Confederates began
probing at the defenses around Fort
Stevens. At first the Federals fell back,
abandoning their picket posts and
retreating to the rifle pits under the guns of
the fort. But when it became clear that the
Confederates were not really pushing their
attack, McCook ordered his dismounted
cavalrymen to reclaim their posts, which
a
In 2002 to 2006, the National Park Service
undertook an archeological survey of Rock
Creek Park. Until that time, most historians
thought that little remained from the battle
except part of Fort Stevens, in the midst of
a developed area along 13th Street, and
the Battleground National Cemetery.
However, archeologists working in the park
began to find Civil War bullets and
fragments of artillery shells. A detailed
review of the written accounts of the battle
showed that fighting did take place in the
park. A further search was then made of
locations suggested by the battle narratives,
and further discoveries were made. Much
of the battlefield does survive, within Rock
Creek Park.
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FORT DE RUSSY
A search was also made for
evidence of fighting north
of Fort DeRussy, on the
west side of the creek.
Archeologists have
identified both the ridge
where the Confederates
built their breastwork and
the ridge to the south
where the Veteran Reserve
Corps set up their line. The
area of the Confederate
breastwork was too heavily
overgrown for effective use
of a metal detector, so
nothing was found there,
but a large number of
bullets and shell fragments
were found on the south-
facing slopes nearby.
Among these were two
fragments of a shell from
the largest gun at Fort
DeRussy, a 100-pound
Parrot rifle. Both fired and
unfired bullets were also
found on the ridge where
the Federals formed their
line. Archeology therefore
supports the obvious
interpretation of the
officers' reports, and
confirms that significant
fighting took place within
the park. The entire
battlefield has not
disappeared, as was feared.
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Early later reported that on the 11th he had
decided to order an assault on Fort Stevens
during the next morning, but when he
scanned the defenses through his field
glasses he changed his mind. During the
night Union reinforcements had come up,
and the Union trenches now bristled with
men flying the flags of the veteran VI
Corps. Early did not attack, but neither did
he immediately withdraw. Skirmishing and
occasional artillery fire continued
throughout the day on the 12th.
Confederate sharpshooters were keeping
Forts Stevens and DeRussy under fire, so
McCook gave the order to drive them back
out of range. In front of Fort Stevens this
action was undertaken at 7 P.M. on the
12th by men from VI Corps under Brigadier
Frank Wheaton. Six veteran regiments led
the charge, but they met "stubborn
resistance" and advanced only a few
hundred yards before the attack was
halted. Wheaton's command had 59 men
killed and 145 wounded in three hours of
fighting. The town once known as
Leesborough, Maryland, showed its
gratitude for this service, and its dislike of
the Confederacy's leading general, by
renaming itself Wheaton. The Veteran
Reserve tried to dislodge the Confederates
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The first finds of Civil War artifacts were on
a southwest- facing slope on the east side
of Rock Creek, an area shown as heavily
wooded on pre-war maps. Both fired and
dropped bullets were found here. Dropped,
unfired bullets show where soldiers were
standing while they were trying to load and
fire their weapons, whereas fired bullets
land where people were aiming. Therefore
troops were firing frorn this slope, and
somebody was firing back at them. Almost
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Fort DeRussy
Engineer Drawing
National Archive
Plan of Fort DeRussy made in 1863.
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2in.
4in.
o
50mm
100mm
Fired Bullets, a piece of Iron Case Shot, and a Shell Fragment from the Battle of Fort
Stevens
136180
2in.
4in.
0
50mm
100mm
Military Artifacts found near one of Washington's Forts: Bullets, Buttons, and the
Brass Tip of a Scabbard.
2in.
4in.
50mm
100mm
Fragment of a 100-pound Parrot Shell, the Heaviest Weapon in Fort DeRussy.
PROTECT OUR SITES
The Archeological Resource Protection Act makes it a federal crime
to damage archeological sites on federal lands or to remove
artifacts from federal property. Unauthorized metal detecting and
artifact collecting are strictly forbidden in the park and on all
other federal property.
Report Crimes and Park Emergencies to 1-866-677-6677 Toll Free