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Fort Stevens, Washington, DC

Photo: D Monack, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized.

SightseeingHistory Buff

Fort Stevens

Walk the restored earthen parapet where Abraham Lincoln came under Confederate fire in July 1864, the only time a sitting president faced enemy fire.

13th Street and Quackenbos Street NW, near Georgia Avenue, Washington, DC · Washington, DC

About Fort Stevens

Fort Stevens guarded the Seventh Street road into Washington, now Georgia Avenue, as part of the ring of Civil War forts around the capital. On July 11 and 12, 1864, Jubal Early's Confederates probed the fort, and Lincoln stood on the parapet to watch and came under sharpshooter fire. A stone on the parapet marks the spot. The Civilian Conservation Corps restored part of the earthworks and a magazine in the late 1930s, and the National Park Service runs the site with no entrance fee. Battleground National Cemetery, where 41 Union dead from the fight lie, is a short walk north.

  • #civil war fort
  • #abraham lincoln
  • #national park service
  • #battlefield
  • #washington dc history

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