Washington, D.C., in the American Civil War

• 1. Introduction

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  Washington, D.C., struck observer George Templeton Strong in the summer of 1861 as the most detestable place on earth. He catalogued the city's miseries: crowd, heat, bad quarters, bad fare, bad smells, mosquitoes, and "a plague of flies transcending everything within my experience." "Beelzebub surely reigns here," he added, "and Willard's Hotel is his temple." In 1860, the federal capital held just 75,800 people and was virtually abandoned each torrid summer. It was defended by no more than 300 to 400 marines and a small unit at the Washington Arsenal. Virginia had just voted to leave the Union, and there was genuine fear that Maryland would follow, leaving the capital ringed by enemy territory. In February 1861, delegates from 21 of the 34 states had gathered at Willard's Hotel for a final effort to prevent the war. It failed, and the fighting began that April.

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• 2. A City Under Threat

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  On the 19th of April, 1861, a riot in Baltimore severed the rail lines connecting Washington to the rest of the Union. Reinforcements bound for the capital could not get through. Andrew Carnegie led the construction of a railroad that bypassed Baltimore entirely. Soldiers arrived via that route on the 25th of April, ending the isolation.

  Lincoln's decision to jail Maryland's pro-slavery leaders without trial meanwhile resolved the political threat from that state. The capital was now more secure, and troops from across the North were arriving in numbers that dwarfed the original garrison. Julia Ward Howe, a Washington resident, heard one regiment singing "John Brown's Body" as soldiers marched beneath her window. She wrote new words for that melody, and what emerged became "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

  The early optimism was shattered in July 1861. Brigadier General Irvin McDowell's army, beaten at the First Battle of Bull Run, staggered back into Washington in disorder. Demoralized soldiers wandered the city's streets. Lincoln understood that the war would be long. He organized the Department of the Potomac on the 4th of August, 1861, and the Army of the Potomac sixteen days after that. Major General George B. McClellan assumed command of the Department on the 17th of August. He arrived with a plan to transform the city's defenses permanently.

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• 3. The Ring of Forts

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  McClellan began by mapping out a complete ring of entrenchments and fortifications to cover 33 miles of land. He sited enclosed forts on the high hills surrounding Washington and placed artillery batteries in the gaps between them. Interconnected rifle pits allowed defenders across the entire line to concentrate fire on any point of attack. Before McClellan arrived, 88 guns had already been placed along the segment of the line facing Virginia.

  One test came on the 11th and the 12th of July, 1864, when Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early led his forces toward the capital. Union troops turned them back at the Battle of Fort Stevens. Lincoln traveled to the fort to observe the fighting. He became the first sitting U.S. president to come under enemy fire during wartime.

  By 1865, the defensive network had reached its finished scale. Thirty-seven miles of fortified line held at least 68 forts. Over 20 miles of rifle pits ran between them, backed by 32 miles of military-only roads and four individual picket stations. Ninety-three artillery batteries stood along the line, comprising over 1,500 guns of both field and siege varieties, as well as mortars. Many of the laborers who dug those rifle pits and raised those earthworks were formerly enslaved people. They had come to Washington because of a legal change that had arrived in April 1862.

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• 4. Slavery Abolished

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  On the 16th of April, 1862, Washington became the first jurisdiction in the United States to abolish slavery. The Compensated Emancipation Act provided financial compensation to slaveholders and freed the enslaved within the district. It passed eight months before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation for the rest of the country.

  Warehouses, supply depots, and factories established around the district drew civilian workers and contractors from across the North. The federal government's rapid expansion added further demand for labor throughout the capital. By 1870, the district's population had reached nearly 132,000.

  The Freedman's Hospital opened in 1862 to serve the needs of the growing community of freed people. At least eighteen hospitals would operate within the district before the war ended. The demand was such that even the U.S. Patent Office was pressed into service as a ward.

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• 5. City of Medicine

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  More than 20,000 injured or ill soldiers received treatment in Washington's hospitals during the Civil War. They arrived by steamboat at the Wharf and over the Long Bridge, transported from the front lines for long-term care. For a time, the Capitol building itself served as a hospital ward.

  Among those who nursed the wounded in Washington was Clara Barton, who would later found the American Red Cross. Dorothea Dix held the formal title of superintendent of female nurses in Washington. The novelist Louisa May Alcott served at the Union Hospital in Georgetown. The poet Walt Whitman worked as a hospital volunteer and in 1865 published "The Wound-Dresser," drawing on what he had witnessed in those wards.

  Relief organizations including the United States Sanitary Commission and the United States Christian Commission maintained significant presences in the capital throughout the war. The surge in population and patients strained the city's water supply. The Army Corps of Engineers built a new aqueduct to bring 10,000 gallons of fresh water to the city each day.

  The Old Capitol Prison held important political and military prisoners throughout the war. Among them were accused Confederate spies Rose Greenhow and Belle Boyd, and the partisan ranger John S. Mosby. One inmate stood apart: Henry Wirz had commanded the Andersonville Prison in Georgia. He was hanged in the prison yard shortly after the war, convicted of cruelty toward Union prisoners of war.

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• 6. Lincoln's Last Night

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  On the 14th of April, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln inside Ford's Theater as Lincoln watched a performance of Our American Cousin. Lincoln died the following morning at 7:22, in the house across the street. He was the first American president to be assassinated. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton marked the moment with a phrase still remembered today. "Now he belongs to the ages," Stanton said, though some recalled the word as "angels."

  Stanton took immediate control of the capital. He closed most major roads and bridges and placed Washington under martial law. Scores of residents were questioned in the growing investigation, and some were detained on suspicion of having aided Booth or withheld information. Booth himself slipped through the cordon; the sentries at the bridges had not been told of the assassination. Also attacked that night was Secretary of State William Henry Seward; Booth's accomplice Lewis Powell carried out that assault. Seward survived.

  Lincoln's body was moved to the Capitol rotunda. Thousands of residents and visitors stood in long queues for hours to pay their respects. Hotels and restaurants filled to capacity as mourners arrived from across the country. In the aftermath, the conspirators were tried in Washington, and several were executed there.

  The new president, Andrew Johnson, believed the city needed to break from its grief. On the 9th of May, 1865, Johnson declared that the rebellion had virtually ended and began organizing a formal program of victory parades.

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• 7. The Grand Review

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  Three of the leading Union armies had stayed close enough to Washington to participate in the review. They were the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the Tennessee, and the Army of Georgia. Officers who had not seen one another in years renewed acquaintances around the city. Rivalries between the commands sometimes ended in fisticuffs, as soldiers argued in Washington's taverns and bars over which army deserved the most credit.

  The Army of the Potomac, led by General George Gordon Meade, paraded first. On the 23rd of May, Meade's column stretched for seven miles through Washington's streets. The crowds and soldiers alike sang patriotic songs as each regiment passed. President Johnson, General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant, the Cabinet, and senior government officials waited at the reviewing stand in front of the White House.

  The following day, William T. Sherman led the combined forces of the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Georgia. His column numbered 65,000 men. Within a week, both armies were disbanded, and many volunteer regiments and batteries were sent home to be mustered out. As the armies dispersed, Washington returned to peacetime struggles that the war had only deferred. The city still had unpaved streets, poor sanitation, and the dank canals that bred mosquitoes through every summer. That task fell to Alexander "Boss" Shepherd, who would serve as district governor in the decade that followed.

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