Existing comment:
Spring 1861:
Washington Waits for War:
Before his presidency, Abraham Lincoln's military career consisted of 77 days in the Illinois militia. Lincoln himself mocked his battlefield exploits as a private and elected captain in the 1832 Black Hawk War, acknowledging that the only blood he had spilled came as a result of mosquito bites.
But no one was laughing in the spring of 1861. A third of all U.S. army officer [sic] had defected to the newly established Confederate States of America, whose president, Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War under President Pierce, boasted a long and distinguishable military career. Through April, wild rumors circulated: Davis, it was whispered, had 60,000 soldiers ready to take Baltimore, Philadelphia -- and Washington.
"Why Don't They Come?"
2,000 barrels of flour were stored at the Capitol in anticipation of a possible siege. Howitzer guns and sandbags surrounded the Treasury Building, where Lincoln and his Cabinet were prepared to make a last stand. Each day an anxious president scanned the horizon for Northern troops with which to defend his beleaguered capital.
"Why don't they come?" he asked. "Why don't they come?"
April 25, 1861:
Deliverance:
It was noon on April 25th when a train pulled into the Baltimore and Ohio station bringing the Seventh Regiment of volunteers from New York. Cheers rang out as the New Yorkers, nearly a thousand strong, marched smartly down Pennsylvania Avenue. At the White House a smiling Lincoln greeted the troops. Later, the men found relief by splashing in the fountain outside Willard's Hotel. Following in their footsteps came men from Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
"Fort Washington":
Soon all of Washington took on the trappings of a military encampment. The White House became a barracks, with soldiers bedding down in the East Room. At the Capitol, the Sixth Massachusetts moved into the Senate chamber. In all, 4,000 troops took shelter in the vast unfinished structure, in whose basement brick ovens produced 50,000 loaves of bread each day. |