One of the rioters – a kid with a widow’s peak – was more dressed for a trip to the bar than a revolution, but what stood out was the pole he was carrying, higher than himself, with ‘ a standard fly in the Confederate uprising against the country 160 years ago.
The capital’s defense was ‘poorly manned’
The version of the flag paraded by the Capitol on Wednesday only became so directly related to the Confederacy in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as Dixiecrats fell back on the idea of civil rights and racial equality. White supremacists later accepted it as one of their emblems of choice.
The Battle of Fort Stevens is, according to Smithsonian Magazine, the closest the Confederacy has ever conquered to Washington DC. The South was battered, but on July 11, 1864, Confederate Lieutenant-General Jubal Early sat on his horse outside Fort Stevens, the Capitol dome according to him, and determined that the city’s defense was “poorly manned,” the magazine reported. He was not wrong.
Grant’s troops return while Early’s men falter
Early, the commander of his leading division ordered to begin the attack on the capital of the United States. The thousands of cavalry, artillerymen and infantrymen – armed with 40 cannons – began their assault.
Grant, who redeployed many of the reinforcements from Washington and took them to the battle in Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, heard of Early’s charge and ordered 17,000 troops to the capital, the magazine said. Commanders wounded and clerks marched to pick up guns and join the sparsely trained reserves that had to defend the city.
At one point, one of Early’s commanders found a loophole in the defense that could provide a lane to the Federal Navy and its ships, the U.S. Treasury and warehouses of food, medicine and ammunition, but Early had a problem. : after defeating Union forces in Lynchburg, Virginia and Frederick, Maryland, in the hot, dry summer, his troops were exhausted, too tired to walk, according to Smithsonian.
‘General Early rode along the weakening formations and told stunned, sweaty, dusty men that he would take them to Washington that day. They tried to raise the old Rebel Yell to show him they were willing, but it burst and came out thin. , ”Reports the magazine.
Before the men could muster their strength, some of Grant’s men returned to the city and launched a counterattack. Early and his men regroup the night of the 11th and before dawn Early takes his field goggles to investigate the federal strongholds.
Instead of the sharp, new uniforms worn by the clerks and walking wounded, he now sees men in faded, war-worn sky blue, and “everywhere he sees fluttering battle flags,” Smithsonian said.
President Lincoln makes history
According to legend, one of the leaders was Capt. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the future U.S. Supreme Court justice, who does not recognize the sloppy Lincoln as his commander-in-chief, but the bark at the president: “Go down, damn fool!”
Early on, he ordered his men to stay in their place and look dangerous, and after darkness fell on the 12th, somewhere after 10 p.m., he and his army retreated to Virginia. And so no Confederate flag could reach it within 6 miles of the Capitol.
“On the evening of July 12, 1864, after deciding to withdraw from Washington, General Early called his staff together and declared, ‘Major, we did not take Washington, but we scared Abe Lincoln like hell! ‘”