rapet toward the
enemy.... As the firing from the Fort ceased, our men ran to the
charge and the Rebels fled. We could see them running across the
fields, seeking the woods on the brow of the opposite hills. Below,
we could see here and there some of our own men bearing away their
wounded comrades. Occasionally a bullet from some long-range rifle
passed over our heads. It was an interesting and exciting spectacle."
Another account says: "President Lincoln visited the lines in person,
and refused to retire, although urged to do so. He exposed himself
freely at Fort Stevens, and a surgeon standing alongside of him was
wounded by a ball which struck a gun and glanced." A gentleman named
Neill, who lived in the country, about twelve miles from the city,
gives a vivid conception of the imminence of the danger. "After
breakfast, on Tuesday, July 12," says Mr. Neill, "I went as usual in a
railway car to the city, and before noon my house was surrounded by
General Bradley Johnson's insurgent cavalry, who had made an attempt
to capture the New York express train, and had robbed the country
store near by of its contents. The presence of the cavalry stopped all
travel by railroad; and Senator Ramsey of Minnesota, who happened to
be in Washington, could find no way to the North except by descending
the Potomac to its mouth and then ascending Chesapeake Bay to
Baltimore. While the cavalry was in the fields around my home, the
enemy's infantry was marching toward the capital by what was called
the Seventh Street road, and they set fire to the residence of Hon.
Montgomery Blair, who had been Postmaster-General. As I sat in my room
at the President's, the smoke of the burning mansion was visible; but
business was transacted with as much quietness as if the foe were
hundreds of miles distant. Mr. Fox, the assistant Secretary of the
Navy, had in a private note informed the President that if there
should be a necessity for him to leave the city he would find a
steamer in readiness at the wharf at the foot of Sixth Street. About
one o'clock in the afternoon of each day of the skirmishing, the
President would enter his carriage, and drive to the forts, in the
suburbs, and watch the soldiers repulse the invaders." For several
days Washington was in great danger of capture. Nearly all the forces
had been sent forward to reinforce Grant, and the city was
comparatively defenseless. But its slender garrison, mostly raw
recruits, held out gallant