As we have seen in the previous installments of our look at how the battle of Fort Stevens 150 years ago was seen in the newspapers of the time, news of the battle of Fort Stevens was slow in being printed in D.C., based on hearsay and often wrong. Thus, too, was the news on the 12th, when the actual battle occurred, when members of Wright’s VI Corps went north of the fort, and pushed back Early’s troops. While there was some information printed that day, it hardly helped keep the citizens informed – and, to be honest, since the major battle was fought in the late afternoon, there was hardly a chance for the news to be printed.
It was not until the 13th that real news was to be had. The Evening Star led with “The Rebels Have Disappeared from our Front!” and “They Leave Their Dead and Wounded Behind Them!” The heaviest fighting had been on the 12th “between five and seven o’clock in the evening, when it was determined to dislodge the rebel sharpshooters who were making themselves mischievously annoying from the Carberry place, and especially from the house of Mr. Lay, better known as the Carberry house, on Rock Creek, to the left of Fort Stevens.”
The also mentioned that “President Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln passed along the line of the city defences [sic] in a carriage last night, and were warmly greeted by the soldiers wherever they made their appearance amongst them.” Lincoln’s presence at the front line also precipitated one of D.C.’s more durable urban legends, but you can read about that elsewhere.
However, the most entertaining description of the battle’s aftermath came the following day, once again in the Star:
To go out 7th street road was the correct thing yesterday. Supposing you couldn’t afford a horse – with flour at $25 a barrel – there were the street cars to the Boundary, thence on foot. We went out. It is proper we see by our morning cotemporaries, [sic] to note progress by the yard in going out the 7th street road. Thus we. At the Boundary our progress was barred by a difficulty in getting lager. There was no getting to the front without lager and no later to be had. There were bars in plenty, (7th street north is lined with them,) and lager in plenty, but “not a drop to drink,” – military orders against it. The bar-keepers looked sorry and we looked sorry.
Then we saw some soldiers coming form the rear entrance of a restaurant wiping their mouths. We went in and came out wiping our mouth. Bar-keeper there evidently hadn’t heard the order. Then we walked up a hill. Something smelt bad. E thought it was dead rebels. It proved to be Bell’s slaughter-house. At the right, on the brow of the hill, were some burnt timbers in ruins – invasion ruins doubtless. We got out our note book. A New York “Special” was ahead of us. He had dismounted from his horse; he was down upon his knees and was examining the relics through his eye-glass. Some objects there looked like the bones of a human being. This human being had perished in the flames. This was the horrors of war. We asked an 8th Illinois cavalryman about it. He thought the bones were beef bones. The ruins were those of a shed burned by accident a year or more ago. The Special put up his eye-glass. We put up our note book, firmly resolved to draw it no more until there was something to note.
Fort Stevens and Outside.
Passing Fort Stevens there were indications of war in earnest. Gaunt chimney stacks standing amid smoking ruins, to the right a peach orchard just felled (after the enemy were gone,) to the left, some distance away, the blaze of a conflagration, where the fire from a building fired by the Confederates in leaving had spread through the underbrush enveloping a dwelling house. The fire was yet smouldering in the Lay house ruins, as shown by a think spiral of smoke rising over a clump of shrubbery. It is difficult to realize that not 24 hours ago the rebels were hiding in this house with such impudent temerity directly under the guns of our fortifications.
In fact they were yet nearer the fort, occupying positions behind knolls, bushes, and trees, within three hundred yards of Fort Stevens. Here it was that the veterans of the 6th corps, spreading themselves out in fan-form line of skirmishers, advanced with the audacity gained from previous baptism in fire, across the open field, directly under the deadly rebel fire from those leafy coverts. On they advanced, and throwing up rifle-pits at once, which they held through the night, and on the left pushing up to the white fence of the Lay house, or rather its blazing ruins, when the rebels sent two reinforcing brigades, pushing our skirmishers back on that side.
It was a bit of display on their part of a bold front as at that very hour, 7 o’clock Tuesday night, the main portion of their force were stealing away towards the fords of the Potomac. They left in the fields some 90 of their dead, and a detail of contrabands sent out to bury them, came marching in at sunset bearing trophies of rebel guns, &c. One rebel was found buried so hastily by his comrades in their exit, that the feet were sticking out of the ground.
In hospital tents beyond the third tollgate the rebels left sixty-three of their wounded, including eleven officers, none of them being above the rank of captain. With these wounded they left a surgeon, two assistant surgeons, twelve nurses (soldiers) and a chaplain. These wounded were looked after yesterday by Dr. Waters, of this city, Hospital Inspector, and they are to be removed to Lincoln Hospital.
And this final line finally brings us back to Capitol Hill. Lincoln Hospital, built in what is today Lincoln Park, was the largest hospital in the city, and built on the most modern lines – and was thus just the place to bring the injured from both sides.
One of the injured was a James Russell, who was from North Carolina, and had served in the 43rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment. Russell died the morning after he was brought to the hospital, and he was interred across the river in what is today Arlington Cemetery.