19 March 2007
Four Years
Four years after we entered the last major conflict in Europe, we were concerned with the prosecution of the leaders of the defeated regime, and the costs of reconstruction.
Four years ago today the war began with a spectacular high-tech light show, and we have convicted the leaders of the defeated regime, but the conflict grinds on like a low-grade fever.
There is nothing magical about the number "four" in conflict. The Brits might tell you that the proper number for a war is closer to five years than four, based on their considerable and painful experience, and it appears that "five" will be the decisive year in the war in Iraq as well. Win or lose, the Brits will be gone from Iraq next year, and the inexorable pressure of the next general election in America will force change.
Perhaps the targeted application of specialized troops, working in close coordination with host nationals in a strategy of seize-and-hold will turn the trick. There are many places in Iraq that are relatively tranquil, after all, and a grim and implacable commitment could change the pace and balance of the conflict. One thing is certain, though, domestic politics will cry out for resolution. Another "one" and it is "done."
Four years how long the American Civil War lasted, and then it too was done; or better said, the formal military part of it was over. The Reconstruction and the backlash that followed enshrined a pervasive racist society in some ways as cruel as the Peculiar Institution.
The downfall of Jim Crow was a long time coming. John Kennedy promised a change, but could not achieve it. It took Lyndon Johnson and the legacy of the President's assassination to bring it to the floor of the Senate, and the Civil Rights Act was passed on July 15th, 1964.
It was a century almost to the day that seventeen Confederates were being interred in a mass grave just off Georgia Avenue, well inside the big concrete ring-road that we now call the Washington Beltway.
This is the time of the year when the traces of the past can be seen in the scarring of the earth. Nature is lush in her bounty in this climate, and the new green is already coming up. For a few weeks the temperature is moderate, the afternoon sun strong, and the leaves have not yet appeared to cloak the ancient wounds. That is how I came to be on Georgia Avenue, following the route of President Lincoln's carriage as he traveled north from the White House to view the Confederate assault on the capital.
In those days, the city ended around K Street on Pierre L'Enfant's epic city grid. I cut across that street to avoid the anti-ear demonstrators, who were walking downtown. Now the broad boulevard is home to the great lobbying firms that exist in uneasy symbiosis with the Congress under its white dome to the southeast.
In Mr. Lincoln's time, the dome was incomplete, as was the spire dedicated to General Washington. K Street marked the northern limit of the city then. To the north stretched truck-patches of vegetable farms and some with tobacco cash crops as the terrain rises to the District heights. The high ground was where the ring of defenses for the young city were placed, the first Beltway, constructed of turf earthworks and bristling with cannons.
In the summer of 1864, the cannon remained, but the troops were gone. U.S. Grant had stripped the city of regular soldiers to support his assault on Petersburg, gateway to Richmond and the key to victory. He was pressing hard at Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and the situation was dire.
He decided that a diversion was the only thing to relieve the inexorable pressure of the Union Army. He dispatched crotchety Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early with about 20,000 troops to strike at Washington, which his spies had reported was poorly defended.
Early had a short temper and was poor at land navigation, but his troops loved him. They called him "Old Jubilee," among other things. He was a fighter. He left the defenses at Petersburg in mid-June and led his men north through the Shenandoah valley and crossed the Potomac into Maryland near Leesburg. By July 9th, he was at Frederick, Maryland, where he demanded a $200,000 ransom to spare the city from the torch. Panic began to rise in the capital as the citizens realized a major Rebel force was approaching from the North.
Wounded soldiers on convalescent leave were recalled. At Fort Stevens and Fort Slocum, near the site of the present Walter Reed Army Medical Center, amputees hobbled to man the ramparts. The technology of the time, medical and military, resulted in the common severing of limbs, just as it does now though we save more.
Grant realized he had a crisis on his hands, and on July 6th sent a division of 5,000 men under James B. Ricketts to reinforce the city, and the full army Corps a few days later. Until they arrived in the District, though the seat of the Government of the United States hung in the balance.
The pivot point was General Lew Wallace, who would be better known in later years for his novel "Ben Hur," though he ought to be rembered as the man who saved the Union. He brought from Baltimore a makeshift force of 2,300 green recruits to meet the Confederates south of Frederick, Maryland, at the Monocacy River. It was July 9th.
Outnumbered and with un-seasoned soldiers, he lost the battle, and his green troops fled the field in the face of the hardened Rebels. He had done just enough to slow Early's advance by a day, and gave precious hours to the Union force racing to the relief of the capital.
Early encamped at Rockville, the bedroom community just north of the current Beltway, and only ten miles from the forts the ringed the city. It was just enough. Just after midnight on the 10th, the 25th New York Cavalry entered Fort Stevens and relieved the amputees.
I took the same route, and parked my car near where the old gate once had been. The Fort held a special significance to the veterans of that war, since they remembered what a near thing had occurred there. It was often used as a site for reunions and ceremonies for the Grand Army of the Republic even as the city marched north, overwhelming the old defenses in a way the Confederates never could.
The old rampart has been reconstructed, and the dry moat below it restored. Two of the gun platforms have cannons mounted, pointing ominously toward the duplex homes across the street. The main building at Walter Reed is visible, if you clamber up on the rampart itself.
There were only two other people there, standing on top of the reconstructed magazine. It was a man and his daughter. He was teaching her how to fly a multi-colored kite in the brisk spring breeze.
By noon of July 11, Old Jubilee had roused his men and advanced down Georgia Avenue to come in view of Fort Stevens. His men probed the line, looking for a weak point to stage his assault, and sweep down on the city and put it to the torch. From the top of the rampart you can see the white marble of the monuments below.
The regular troops had arrived just in time, and Early's men were met by gunfire from Fort Stevens in his front, and flanking fire from Fort Derussy to his right and Fort Slocum to his left.
When examining the field at first light on the 12th, Early saw the ramparts lined with Union regulars, and later that day a tall man in a dark frock coat. One of his sharpshooters got off a shot at the figure, though was not lucky enough to bring him down. One of the soldier told the President to get down, and it is unknown if he finished his admonition with “you damn fool.â€
It is the only time a sitting President has been in a combat encounter, and certainly the only time that one brought the First Lady along to see one.
By nightfall of July 12, Early was done with skirmishing, and abandoned the idea of assaulting Fort Stevens, he withdrew to the north, and I intended to follow his line of retreat, past the liquor stores and up to the mass grave for seventeen of the unknown Rebel soldiers he left behind in Silver Spring, two miles inside the Beltway.
As I was walking away, the man on top of the magazine waved to me. I stopped to chat. He is an African American who lives in the neighborhood. When the forts were abandoned by the Army after the war, many became temporary shelters for Freedmen who took refuge in their shelter on the periphery of the city.
He enjoys the history of the old Fort, which he uses as a park and a place to play with his daughter. There are not many tourists here, no veterans left to come, and few that remember what this place was.
It is interesting to think about the consequences of those three days in July. They say that Early's mission was a success, though he failed; he certainly relieved the pressure on Bobby Lee, and enabled the war to continue into its fourth year. Lew Wallace, in defeat, saved the capital, and changed the way the election could have gone later that year, since the Rebels did not get to burn the White House.
Mr. Lincoln did not get shot, at least not that day, and was re-elected, and brought the matter to a conclusion after four long years. At least the first part was ended. It took a century to get to the second part, the Civil Rights bookend to the Civil War, and that isn't over either, though it happened more than a couple score years ago.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com