5fish
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2007
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- Central Florida
Here is a story I found about Lincoln while he was at Ft. Stevens... He led troops to battle and was the target for Confederate Sharpshooters...
Link: https://www.history.com/news/lincolns-battlefield-brush-with-death-150-years-ago
Here:
As the fate of the jittery city hung in the balance, a calm, steady hand held a spyglass from a White House window. With the advancing enemy just five miles away, President Abraham Lincoln peered down the Potomac River, where a warship stood ready to evacuate him, and saw salvation. Rushing to his carriage as artillery shots thundered in the distance, Lincoln rode to the riverside wharves to personally greet the two battle-tested divisions of the Union Army’s 6th Corps that were hastily dispatched by Grant. As a sign of his stiffened resolve, the commander-in-chief personally led his marching troops to the battle that had begun that morning at Fort Stevens. “Give the road for the President,” ordered the cavalry as Lincoln passed dead soldiers being carried away on stretchers and a stream of civilians fleeing for safety in the opposite direction.
Lincoln had always been a hands-on commander-in-chief, even personally test-firing rifles on the grassy expanses around the White House. Still, Confederate sharpshooters probably could not have believed their eyes when during the first afternoon of the Battle of Fort Stevens a lanky, bearded man in a dark suit and stovepipe hat emerged on the fort’s earthen parapets. Discouraged by the elaborate defenses that had been erected and concerned about his tired soldiers wilting in the blistering heat, Early had held back on a major assault, but Confederate snipers trained to hit targets from distances of 800 yards or more were firing shots from perches in trees, cornfields and houses. One of those shots rang out and came close to striking the president, who was standing on the parapet surveying the enemy in the line of fire. As John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretary, noted in his diary that night, ”A soldier roughly ordered him to get down or he would have his head knocked off.” While James Madison was in the vicinity of a battle when the British arrived in the city a half-century before, Lincoln might have been the only sitting American president to come under enemy fire while in office.
Link: https://www.history.com/news/lincolns-battlefield-brush-with-death-150-years-ago
Here:
As the fate of the jittery city hung in the balance, a calm, steady hand held a spyglass from a White House window. With the advancing enemy just five miles away, President Abraham Lincoln peered down the Potomac River, where a warship stood ready to evacuate him, and saw salvation. Rushing to his carriage as artillery shots thundered in the distance, Lincoln rode to the riverside wharves to personally greet the two battle-tested divisions of the Union Army’s 6th Corps that were hastily dispatched by Grant. As a sign of his stiffened resolve, the commander-in-chief personally led his marching troops to the battle that had begun that morning at Fort Stevens. “Give the road for the President,” ordered the cavalry as Lincoln passed dead soldiers being carried away on stretchers and a stream of civilians fleeing for safety in the opposite direction.
Lincoln had always been a hands-on commander-in-chief, even personally test-firing rifles on the grassy expanses around the White House. Still, Confederate sharpshooters probably could not have believed their eyes when during the first afternoon of the Battle of Fort Stevens a lanky, bearded man in a dark suit and stovepipe hat emerged on the fort’s earthen parapets. Discouraged by the elaborate defenses that had been erected and concerned about his tired soldiers wilting in the blistering heat, Early had held back on a major assault, but Confederate snipers trained to hit targets from distances of 800 yards or more were firing shots from perches in trees, cornfields and houses. One of those shots rang out and came close to striking the president, who was standing on the parapet surveying the enemy in the line of fire. As John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretary, noted in his diary that night, ”A soldier roughly ordered him to get down or he would have his head knocked off.” While James Madison was in the vicinity of a battle when the British arrived in the city a half-century before, Lincoln might have been the only sitting American president to come under enemy fire while in office.