The Civil War drastically changed the capital city of the United States of America, Washington, District of Columbia. Often called Washington City in the 19th century, it was transformed from a small, provincial city of 63,000, in which the nation’s Capitol was located, to the “Nation’s Capital,” of more than 200,000. In 1860 it was a sleepy Southern town, with muddy, dirty streets, an unhealthy, noxious environment, and many ramshackle buildings. By 1865 Washington, D. C., was the symbol of a newly reunited country, but more than that, it had become a distinctly cosmopolitan place. The former Southern population was enlarged and enlivened by a broad cross section of society—Southern, Northern, freedpeople, businesspeople, and a huge influx of middle-class women and men who came to work for expanded wartime government agencies and stayed to live. Between 1861 and 1865 the city’s population nearly quadrupled.
Washington, D. C., during the Civil War stood for the heart and soul of the Union cause, a cherished symbol of the power of the United States of America. President Abraham Lincoln, the members of the cabinet, and members of Congress lived and worked in the city, carrying on the vision of the founding fathers. Washington, D. C., was also the most tempting target for Confederate armies. Its capture would be a brilliant prize for the Southern cause, and citizens learned to live with the threat of sudden invasion. The war’s threat to D. C. was demonstrated graphically by the circle of forts guarding the city, the barracks crammed with soldiers, the shanty towns filled with ex-slaves bringing the revolution in freedom close to government scrutiny, and the hospitals teeming with wounded and dying soldiers.
Situated on the banks of the Potomac River, the District of Columbia at the start of the Civil War was composed of several small, distinctive communities in a rural setting. Much of the city was built on a swamp, and disease and illness were rampant, particularly in the hot, muggy summer months. The White House is a good example of the unhealthy conditions experienced by many Washingtonians: It was nearby the part of the Potomac River that met with the city canal (the sewer), the city dump, and a slum area called “Murder Bay.” This unpleasant combination made life challenging and, occasionally, tragic for the chief executive and his family. The 1862 death of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln’s son, Willie, was attributed to typhoid fever, a disease contracted through infected drinking water.
Washington City was in an unfinished state in 1860. The Capitol building, where Congress holds session, was undergoing a major renovation, which included the addition of a huge dome. When criticized for spending money on this construction during wartime, Lincoln replied, “It is a sign we intend for the Union to go on.” On December 2, 1863, the famous figure “Armed Freedom” was placed on top of the dome, and by Lincoln’s second inaugural the Capitol was completed. Through the war years it also served as a fort, a barracks, a bakery, and a hospital. The Smithsonian Institute and the Treasury Building were also prominent structures; the latter also housed the State Department. The Navy and War Departments were located near the White House; Lincoln was usually able to walk there without fear of attack.
In the tense early days of the Civil War, Washington, D. C., was a city under siege. Though the district’s responsibilities were national, its immediate safety was questionable. Roughly 100 miles from Richmond, Virginia, the seat of the newly established Confederate States of America, Washington was set amid the beautiful tree-lined hills of the Potomac River Valley; the 10-square-mile tract of the District of Columbia was bordered on three sides by Maryland, a slave state with divided allegiances. Virginia, the Confederate stronghold, bordered the fourth side.
At the outset of the Civil War, President Lincoln found himself and the Union government practically defenseless in the capital city. Dire as the situation was, it became even worse on April 19, 1861, when a confrontation threatened to speed Maryland toward SECESSION and isolate the capital city. The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, the first fully armed unit to respond to Lincoln’s call for troops, left home to defend Washington. Since no rail lines passed all the way through Baltimore, the unit had to detrain and cross the city to board another train. A mob formed in the path of the soldiers, and they were eventually surrounded. Citizens began pelting them with rocks, bricks, and pistol fire. A few men of the Sixth opened fire, and a nasty brawl ensued. By the time the regiment fought its way to the train and out of the city, four soldiers and 12 townspeople lay dead.
Because of the incident, Maryland governor Thomas Hicks, a Unionist, approved the destruction of RAILROAD bridges into the city. Secessionists tore down the TELEGRAPH lines that passed through Baltimore from Washington, and the Union capital was effectively cut off from the North. Fearing an attack, citizens and government clerks in Washington formed into volunteer companies. However, on the next day the 7th New York Regiment arrived by train, having commandeered and repaired a dilapidated steam engine in Annapolis. Other units soon followed, and the imminent danger to the capital passed.
When Col. Charles P. Stone set about organizing the militias that would provide a permanent defense force for Washington, he faced a daunting task. The regiments that arrived in the early days of the war were impressive in number but questionable in quality. Most were untrained, and discipline was rarely enforced. Accommodations were insufficient; the Capitol housed the men of the 7th New York who arrived in April 1861. Robert Gould Shaw, a private with the Seventh, addressed a letter to his parents in this way: “April 26, 1861, House of Representatives.” He described his experience: “That evening we marched up to the Capitol, and were quartered in the House of Representatives, where we each have a desk, and easy-chair to sleep in, but generally prefer the floor and our blankets. . . . The Capitol is a magnificent building, and the men all take the greatest pains not to harm anything. Jeff Davis shan’t get it without trouble.” Many soldiers also encamped in the East Room of the White House.
The defense of Washington, D. C., proved a chronic problem for Lincoln and his generals. From the very steps of the White House, Lincoln could view Arlington, Robert E. Lee’s former home, a constant reminder of the danger that surrounded the city. Even more problematic was the fact that the city was strategically exposed, situated at the point of the “V” formed by the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. Approaches into the “V” from the north abounded; bridges provided access from the south.
Col. Joseph Mansfield, commander of the Department of Washington, was responsible for overseeing the construction of fortifications outside Washington. The projects were just underway when Union forces were defeated at the First
Battle Of Bull Run in July 1861. Lincoln and other leaders, unsure of the CoNfEDERATE army’s capability, feared invasion. Although it never came, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton made it clear that Union campaigns in Virginia would always include provisions for the defense of Washington. George Brinton Mcclellan later claimed that the policy drastically hindered his PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.
Batteries and forts eventually created a 37-mile circle around Washington. Including Alexandria, Arlington Heights, Chain Bridge, and Georgetown, there were 68 forts with more than 800 huge cannons, typically between 700 to 1,500 yards apart. Twenty-three miles of trenches and 93 manned artillery positions completed the ring of defense. Other important sites such as city reservoirs, major roads into the city from the southeast and the north, and the entrance from the Potomac River into the city were heavily protected. If the enemy got beyond the fort, preparations were made for the Treasury building to be a barricade against attack and for the president and his cabinet to be hidden safely in its basement.
The strong fortifications were weakened from time to time by a chronic problem with understaffing. The men who stood behind the “ring of forts” numbered 30,000, sometimes more and sometimes far less. The latter was the case in July 1864. As ULYSSES S. Grant directed the siege of Petersburg with an eye to capturing Richmond, Confederate general JuBAL A. Early defeated Union forces on a march to Washington with 15,000 rebel soldiers. On July 11, Early appeared outside the Washington defense works, five miles north of the White House. In response to the frantic appeals of the War Department, Grant dispatched the VI Corps to Washington to bolster the convalescents, militia, and unit remnants on hand there. Early launched a tentative attack on July 12, the only combat personally witnessed by President Lincoln, who watched from Fort Stevens. Early was stopped from a full attack by the presence of the VI Corps, and he wisely withdrew.
Early’s near-invasion was the closest the South ever came to attacking the Northern capital during four years of civil war. Other challenges were nearly as great. In May 1861 Washington had one hospital. Fourteen months later, 60 hospitals were built within the city. But it was impossible to build enough hospitals to house the thousands and thousands of sick, wounded, and dying soldiers from the nearby battlefields of Bull Run, FREDERICKSBURG, and Chancellorsville, to name a few.
The War Department had to take over hotels, churches, schools, colleges, and homes and turn them into hospitals. Living in Washington meant that locals were the first to know the terrible price of each battle, as the long line of horse-pulled ambulances deposited the bitter fruits of carnage. After 1863 specially designed “pavilion” style hospitals predominated. Cleaner and more efficient, the white shedlike structures could be expanded to meet the needs of the war.
Indeed, the whole city could be described as the major supply depot for the eastern Union army. Bakeries, butcheries (more than 10,000 head of cattle grazed on the grass near the unfinished Washington Monument), warehouses for food, clothes, and ammunition dotted the landscape.
Despite Washington, D. C.’s, vulnerable position during the Civil War, President Lincoln never seriously considered relocating further north. Overnight, the city stood as a proud symbol of the Union, the seat of governance, where politicians, wealthy businessmen, and senior military officials discussed and planned the unfolding war; a target for the Confederates and their spies and sympathizers to plot the Union’s downfall; a safe haven for more than 40,000 escaped, and later freed, slaves; the destination for soldiers and many of their family members; a final stop for job seekers, women and men alike, to fill the thousands of new positions the expanded wartime administration required. The immense changes Washington, D. C., underwent during the war paralleled those of the larger nation.
See also Baltimore, Maryland, riots; medicine and hospitals.
Further reading: Kathryn Jacob, Testament to Union (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Richard Lee, Mr. Lincoln’s City (McLean, Va.: EPM Publications, 1981); Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1986); William Osborn Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times: Memoirs and Reports of Lincoln’s Secretary (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).
—Richard J. Roder
Watie, Stand (1806-1871) Cherokee chief, Confederate general
Cherokee political leader and Confederate brigadier general Stand Watie was born on December 12, 1806, in the Cherokee town of Oothcaloga, near Rome, Georgia. His father was David Oowatie and his mother was Susannah Reese.
As a child, Watie attended the Morovian Mission School in Springplace, Georgia. He became a planter as well as a clerk in the Cherokee Supreme Court. In 1835, along with approximately 100 other Cherokee, he signed the controversial Treaty of New Echota. In the treaty, which Principal Chief John Ross and the majority of the Cherokee Nation opposed, the Cherokee agreed to cede their land to the United States and move to the territory now known as Oklahoma. Watie migrated in 1837, while most of the nation unsuccessfully tried to resist removal.
The tensions between Ross and Watie reemerged when the Civil War began. Ross led the Cherokee Nation to a stance of neutrality, but Watie immediately threw his support behind the Confederacy. Watie received a commission as a colonel, formed the Confederate Cherokee Regiment of Mounted Rifles, and arranged a Cherokee-Confederacy alliance. Ross reluctantly supported the alliance before fleeing the nation in 1862. With Ross gone, the Cherokee elected Watie principal chief. Watie participated in various cavalry engagements in Indian Territory, including battles at Wilson’s Creek, Chustenahlah, Pea Ridge, Cowskin Prairie, Webbers Falls, and the First and Second Battles of Cabin Creek. In May 1864 the Confederacy rewarded Watie with a promotion to brigadier general, making him the only Native American to achieve this rank. Watie’s military career ended when he surrendered on June 23, 1865.
When the war ended, Watie helped negotiate the Cherokee Reconstruction Treaty of 1866 and served as a delegate to the General Council for Indian Territory in 1870-71. Soon after, Watie returned to his Honey Creek farm, where he died on September 9, 1871.
See also Pea Ridge, Battle of.
Further reading: Frank Cunningham, General Stand Watie’s Confederate Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998); W. Craig Gaines, The Confederate Cherokees: John Drew’s Regiment of Mounted Rifles (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989); Laurence M. Hauptman, Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1995).
—Andrew K. Frank
Welles, Gideon (1802-1878) politician Diarist and secretary of the Union navy, Gideon Welles was born on July 1, 1802, in Glastonbury, Connecticut, to the merchant Samuel Welles and his wife Anne Hale. An excellent education prepared Welles for a career as a newspaperman and politician. A staunch Democrat, Welles wrote for the Hartford Times while establishing a strong political base among Connecticut voters. In the 1820s and 1830s he was elected to the state legislature. Although ambitious for higher office, Welles was defeated in each of his attempts to become a congressman, a senator, and the governor of his state. In 1846 Welles was appointed chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing in the Navy Department. In this position he was responsible for supplying the U. S. Navy during the Mexican-American War (1846-48).
Married to his cousin Mary Jane Hale and the father of nine children, Welles spent the 1840s and 1850s actively opposing the extension of slavery in the territories. He articulated his position in a series of editorials in the New
York Evening Po. st denouncing the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act. He broke with his party in supporting former Democrat Martin Van Buren on the Free-Soil ticket in the presidential election in 1848. In 1855 Welles joined the newly formed Republican Party in protest over the Kansas-Nebraska “outrage.” He established a Republican newspaper, the Hartford Evening Press, and was a force in mobilizing New England behind the young party. A member of the Republican National Committee, Welles was determined to elect a president in the election of 1860. Welles threw his support behind Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, and for that, he was given a position in Lincoln’s cabinet. On March 4, 1861, Gideon Welles was appointed secretary of the U. S. Navy.
Secretary Welles faced formidable challenges at the beginning of the American Civil War. From a tiny, weak, and old-fashioned navy, Welles was expected to mount an effective blockade of Southern ports along the Atlantic coast, conquer Confederate forces protecting the vast interior water systems, and forge a smooth working relationship with the U. S. Army. From 1861, Welles expanded the fleet through buying, building, and leasing. For example, he leased 184 merchant ships from private companies and quickly converted them into ironclads, ready for service. Realizing that a successful wartime navy demanded more than building gunboats, Welles assembled an impressive staff, including the brilliant assistant secretary of the Navy, Gustavus Vasa Fox. They worked together to make the navy contracting system efficient and relatively free of corruption. Just as important, Welles created a “Committee of Conference” to plan the overall strategy of the water war. Essentially a think tank, the committee also recommended specific tactical maneuvers and coordinated the movements of the various fleets in the eastern and western theaters.
Union naval victories achieved early in the war confirmed the correctness of Welles’s program. Port Royal in South Carolina fell in November 1861, soon to be followed by the fall of western Forts Henry and Donelson in early 1862, and New Orleans in the same year. Naval heroes such as David Dixon Porter and David Glasgow Far-RAGUT drew attention to the fact that Union control of the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi River would strangle and then stop the flow of goods and munitions to the Confederacy. Although the blockade was never totally effective, its success has to be counted as a major factor in the ultimate Union victory. In 1865 Welles could reflect with pride that the U. S. Navy was second in strength and numbers only to the British.
Welles was a loyal Lincoln man, but he engaged in bitter quarrels with the other cabinet members, most notably Edwin M. Stanton and William H. Seward, secretaries of war and state. He recorded the controversies and events of the Civil War in his remarkable and brilliant diary. Welles also recorded his growing dissatisfaction over the direction of Reconstruction policy. Although he supported emancipation, Welles opposed giving African Americans full civil rights. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson retained Welles in his cabinet, and the two men found they had much in common. Like Johnson, Welles favored states’ rights and an easy Reconstruction policy toward the former Confederacy. Eventually, Welles rejoined the Democratic Party, and at the end of Johnson’s administration returned to Hartford. He died on February 11, 1878.
See also Kansas-Nebraska Act; Mississippi River war; New Orleans, Battle of.
Further reading: Gideon Welles, The Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, ed. Howard K. Beale (New York: Norton, 1960); John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).
Wheeler, Joseph (1836-1906) Confederate general, politician
Joseph Wheeler is one of only two persons who achieved the rank of general in both the Confederate army and the U. S. Army. Born in Augusta, Georgia, on September 10, 1836, he grew up in Connecticut and entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1854. Upon graduation he served in the Regiment of Mounted Rifles at Fort Craig, New Mexico. In 1861 Wheeler returned to Georgia and was commissioned as a lieutenant, and soon after he became colonel of the 19th Alabama Infantry Regiment. Two years later, at the age of 26, he was promoted to major general of cavalry.
His skills as cavalry commander were most effective when he operated close to the army; he covered every retreat of the Army of Tennessee from Perryville, Kentucky, to Atlanta, Georgia. Instead of accompanying the army on its march toward Nashville in 1864, Wheeler’s cavalry was assigned the difficult and mainly futile task of harassing the Union army of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman as it marched through Georgia and the Carolinas. Though many in the Army of Tennessee (as well as many historians) judged his offensive tactics and raids to be of little importance, Gen. Robert E. Lee considered him one of his two best cavalry officers.
After the end of the war, Wheeler married Daniella Jones Sherrod and settled in Lawrence County, Alabama, as a well-to-do lawyer, planter, and businessman. From 1884 to 1898, he served as a Democratic congressman from Alabama, in which capacity he actively opposed the tariff and supported Free Silver.
Joseph Wheeler (Library of Congress)
At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Wheeler offered his services to President McKinley and was commissioned major general of U. S. Volunteers. He participated in the capture of Santiago, where troops under his command, the “Rough Riders,” stormed San Juan Hill. He died on January 25, 1906, in Brooklyn, New York, and is one of a very few Confederate generals interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
See also Sherman’s March through Georgia; Stuart, J. E. B.
Further reading: John P. Dyer, From Shiloh to San Juan: The Life of “Fightin’ Joe” Wheeler (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992).
—Stacey Graham
Whig Party See Volume IV.
World History
