This battered Washington home near Fort Stevens still carries the scar left by Confederate General Jubal Early’s surprise attack on the capital. As Union troops scrambled to defend the city, this civilian structure became an unintended casualty, its shattered wall a silent witness to the only time during the Civil War that Washington, D.C. came under direct fire.
The home belonged to Elizabeth Proctor Thomas, a free Black woman whose farmland was abruptly seized by Union engineers to construct the defensive fort. Though the military destruction broke her heart, she stood resiliently on her property as the conflict raged around her. Her loss became one more quiet sacrifice folded into the vast machinery of the Union war effort, a reminder that even loyal citizens paid a personal price for the nation’s survival.
During the frantic clash on July 12, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln stood directly on the fort’s parapet to witness the fighting firsthand. A Union surgeon standing just feet away from him was shot by a Confederate sharpshooter, prompting a young officer and future Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., to famously shout through the smoke, “Get down, you fool!”
