Welcome to Fort Much remains of Fort Ethan Allen, a critical part of the Defenses of Washington, D.C., during the Civil War.

Fort Ethan Allen defended the southern approaches to Chain Bridge, one of three spans Confederate troops could have used to cross the and invade Washington. Unlike many Civil War sites, Fort Ethan Allen saw no major battles. But that does not diminish its value: the fort’s very existence deterred an assault. The Confederate Army never launched an attack that captured the nation’s capital. “The possession of Chain Bridge communication with the opposite shore of the Potomac . . . was essential to the operation of our forces Defenses of Washington Washington, D.C., was the most heavily fortified city in the Union during the Civil War. By the in and to the prestige of our arms.” war’s end, 164 major forts and batteries comprised a 37-mile defensive perimeter. — General John G. Barnard, U.S. Army, 1871

Library of Congress P oto ma Fort Marcy Chain Bridge c R Chain Bridge from iv The strategic importance of Chain er Fort Marcy also protected Chain Washington, D.C., 1865 Bridge, while it and Fort Ethan Allen Bridge was reflected in the degree Military control of the bridge began protected each other: ditches and of protection it received on both in 1861 so that Union soldiers could pits connected the two forts and the sides of the Potomac.

maintain communications and troop ➚ LEESBURG range of their guns overlapped. Chain Bridge movements across the Potomac G eo ➚ between Washington, D.C., and Library of Congress rge WASHINGTON, D.C. Fort Ethan Allen Washington al Parkway Union-held territory in Virginia. Memori Fort Marcy The fort was strategically located P IM M Battery Martin Scott I on high ground between Pimmit T In late May 1861, President Lincoln RUN Run and a natural ravine. Surround- Chain Bridge Battery approved his generals’ plans to build ing land was cleared of trees to Fort Ethan Allen fortifications in strategic areas of northern open sight lines in all directions. N. S Virginia across the Potomac River from ta!ord Street

Glebe Road H M NC il RA the nation’s capital. Lincoln inspected ita F B ry GUL R

o Fort Ethan Allen during its construction ad in September 1861. ➚ UN RICHMOND R N

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D AL DON A Defensive Stronghold, Heavily Armed No enemy would have gotten as close to Fort Ethan Allen as you are now. A half-mile perimeter of earthen walls and deep ditches enclosed the fort. Inside, as many as 1,000 soldiers manned the fort’s of 36 guns, some with a range of several miles. A rugged, steep ravine between the fort and the Potomac River near Chain Bridge also deterred an attack. The closest fighting to Fort Ethan Allen occurred at Fort Library of Congress Stevens, six miles away in Washington, D.C., in July 1864. Loading a Gun, Arlington Heights, 1862 When firing , artillery soldiers stood on a level earthen platform behind the fort’s steep, thick walls.

Defending an Attack Fort Ethan Allen never came under Confederate attack. But You are looking at a replica 20-pounder Parrott had it, Union riflemen — concealed in deep trenches and firing from higher ground — would have had the advan- rifle behind the surviving rampart and positioned tage over Confederate troops moving over open terrain. Further, the fort’s soldiers would have been at the ready, at the reconstructed gun platform #23. Illustration will be detailed and in full color warned of Confederate movements from messages relayed along a series of posts as far west as Vienna, Virginia.

The Face of The Fort in Profile Sections of the Fort Remain the Fort parapet glacis The red line superimposed on The red line indicates the Parts of the south face of the fort are visible. rampart an 1871 engineer’s drawing location of the gunports shows subsequent changes in and the height of the the profile of the landscape. A rampart — the fort’s main earthen wall — rose rampart before they had behind a deep ditch that surrounded the fort to eroded. Trees now grow in what was a steeply sloped, impede enemy access. Cannons fired through six-foot ditch. ditch gunports, usually openings in the top of a parapet elevated on the main wall. National Archives

Help us preserve this piece of Civil War history . Please do not climb on the earthworks. Thank you. A Bastion-Style Fort Is a Mighty Fortress Surviving Magazine, Guard House Fort Ethan Allen’s star-shaped design enabled Bastion soldiers to defend all sides of the fort. Surviving Bombproof Constructed primarily from earth and wood, Fort Ethan Allen was a bastion-style fort. Bastions are angular structures that Surviving Rampart jut out from the enclosing walls. They eliminate blind spots, giving defending soldiers a full-range view of oncoming troops. Bastions also allowed crossfire from multiple angles, ✮ making it nearly impossible for an attacker to approach the You are here Abatis fort or scale its walls without being exposed to the line of fire.

Illustration will be based on the 3D rendering

Covered Way Fort Ethan Allen is the best-preserved example of a bastion-style fort in Arlington .

Soldier’s Sketch of Military Road a Clearing the Way Fort Marcy Priority Task To build Fort Ethan Allen, trees“Quote were cleared to come about the construction of the fort orThe stumps of trees felled In September 1861, Union to build nearby Fort Marcy troops quickly cut a road to open lines of sight and to provideabout buildingAbraham Lincoln visiting it while it was underwere captured in this soldier’s through dense forest to connect materials. Timbers hewn from the trunks of sketch. The land cleared the fort with Leesburg Turnpike to create the Defenses of at the Virginia end of Chain large oaks, hickories, and chestnutsconstruction. supported Quote to come about the constructionWashington of eroded quickly, Bridge. Extended several times the fort’s thick earthen walls. Sharpened tree sending tons of sediment during the war, “Military Road” the fort or about Abraham Lincoln visiting it while intoit the Potomac River. eventually ended near present- branches became abatis, a defensive obstacle day Ronald Reagan Washington around the fort’s perimeter. was under construction.” National Airport.

National Archives U.S. Army Military History Institute

Walk up Old Glebe Road to view additional remaining earthworks and a model of Fort Ethan Allen.

A Defensive Artillery Fort What is Artillery? Operated by a crew of soldiers, artillery consists of a variety of large-caliber weapons, or cannons. Fort Ethan Allen contained • Guns, howitzers, and mortars: These cannons have smooth bores (barrels) and fire ball-shaped . emplacements for 36 guns. • : Rifled arms shoot elongated, bullet-shaped projectiles The forts that comprised the Defenses of Washington from barrels with spiraled grooves. These cannons fire more accurately than smooth-bore weapons. were spaced at half-mile intervals, supplemented with artillery batteries and rifle pits, making a nearly Fort Ethan Allen’s artillery inventory continuous connection between them. The armaments in 1865 included: Library of Congress Positioning the Guns were chosen for their range of fire and positioned • three 6-pounder guns Fort Ethan Allen’s configuration of guns would have been similar to this one at Fort Lincoln in Washington, D.C. to ensure that the line of defenses had no gaps. • four 24-pounder guns • three 32-pounder guns The strategy worked: no Confederate attack led to • two 8-inch howitzers What Ammunition Was Fired? capturing Washington during the war. • three 32-pounder howitzers • Solid shot: • three 10-pounder Parrott rifles A spherical shape ( ball) made from a dense material such as iron smashed its target. • eleven 30-pounder Parrott rifles • Canister: The 20-pounder (replica) in front • six 12-pounder Napoleon guns A thin-walled metal cylinder filled with lead pellets • four 10-inch mortars and saw dust turned a cannon into a giant shotgun, of you — like other field guns — was portable, • two 24-pounder mortars scattering the contents in all directions. • Explosive : transported on a gun carriage, and called into The term “pounder” refers to the weight of the A hollow casing filled with black burst ammunition that could be fired. into large pieces on impact. service where needed.

How many men did it take to fire a 20-pounder Parrott rifle?

The art of firing a cannon was the result of a skilled team effort. A well-drilled LoAD READY FIRE gun crew, consisting of seven men plus a gunner, could fire two to three rounds per minute from a field cannon. New Illustrations to come Gunners and their crew followed a strict set of rules to load, ready, aim, You and fire a cannon — a sequence that are here required coordinated precision and practice.

6 and 7 cut fuses and distribute rounds to 5, who carries 1 and 2 step clear. 3 pricks with 3 steps clear. 4 pulls lanyard and fires them to 2. 1 sponges barrel. 2 puts round in gun. 1 rams priming wire. 4 hooks lanyard to primer, the gun. round into barrel while 3 closes vent with thumbnail. puts primer in vent, and moves to the rear. The View in 1865 Taken from near where you are standing.

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Library of Congress Company M, 2nd Heavy 1 Entrance to Powder 3 Revetment 6 30-pounder Parrott Rifles 9 Sentry Box 11 Commanding Officer Magazine/Filling Room 3 5 7 9 Artillery, August 1865 Horizontal wood boards helped cannons usually remained in a The guard post mounted on the Captain William Parrish stands to the Ammunition was stored in magazines The war ended in April 1865, but troops support the fort’s earthen walls. fixed location, as they were more com- parapet has remains of the canvas that right of a little girl, who is not his and filling rooms, underground continued to occupy the fort temporarily. Vertical posts provided stronger plicated to move than the 20-pounder had enclosed it. The fabric walls could daughter but possibly a visiting chambers with aboveground With their guns cleaned and polished, protection against enemy fire but field cannons in the foreground. be quickly moved aside during an relative. After the war, Parrish became entrances. Filling rooms sometimes Company M would be mustered out at were more time-consuming to install. attack to give the guard a clear field sheriff of Genesee County, N.Y. stored armed shells, while magazines Washington, D.C., on September 29. Gabion of fire. held black powder and projectiles. 7 44 Folded Tarpaulin Large wicker containers filled with 10-inch Tarpaulins protected cannons from 10 Ladder to the Parapet 1210 earth6 or rubble reinforced openings in A model 1841 mortar. Mortars fired Photographer 2 Field Cannon and Limber harsh weather. Here, one sits on a box Ladders provided quick access to the The photographer the parapet by absorbing the shocks of ammunition in a high arc that could was here A field cannon hitched to a limber designed to store a canister. top of the parapet. Only an on-duty stood on top of the artillery fire. reach targets shielded by elevated formed a four-wheeled vehicle moved guard or an officer who needed a bombproof (remains to terrain. by a team of six horses. Here, the clearer view of a distant target was your right) and looked Gunner 11 company mascot stands on top of the 5 8 African American Freedman allowed on parapets. This soldier wears a tube pouch with towards the magazine cannon’s wooden ammunition chest. The hired servants, often that would have been “No. 23” stenciled on it. He was part of former slaves, for some officers, You directly in front of you. the artillery crew assigned to gun plat- depending on their ranks. Servants are here form 23 on the south face of the fort. received room, board, and clothing. Surviving Magazine, Fort Ethan Allen — Guard House

What to Look For Entrance

Surviving Bombproof The earthen mounds that surround you are Magazine the remains of the fort’s construction. Guard House You are here

The model behind you recreates Fort Ethan Allen as it was Magazine depicted in U.S. Army engineering drawings published after the war. Use the drawing and model to locate features that survive and to visualize those lost by erosion and later Magazine development. Imagine the area during the war: cleared of trees, orchards, and farms to make way for forts, rifle trenches, and military roads. Magazine

Covered Way

Built by volunteers of the 2nd Vermont Infantry, Surviving Rampart the fort was named to honor Ethan Allen, a Revolutionary War hero from their state.

National Archives

Entrance Powder Magazines and Bombproof Civil War Engineering Cut through the raised parapets and Filling Rooms Partially underground and near the Ammunition was kept in a magazine, Fort Ethan Allen shared features“Quote with other to come forts inabout theramparts, construction entrances were at groundof the fort or center of the fort, this thick-walled level and faced away from fronts that an underground storage room. shelter provided protection against the Defenses of Washington. Built could be exposed to enemy action. Shells were armed, and sometimes incoming artillery fire. about Abraham Lincoln visiting it while it was understored, in a filling room, while Library of Congress in September 1861, it was one of the earliest of the magazines held black powder and Guard House Covered Way Where did it go? projectiles. Implements for firing After the war ended, the fort was ordered closed. forts, and with a perimeter of 768construction. yards, it was oneQuote toNear come the front about entrance, the this structure construction of A trench-like passageway that cannons could also be kept in a At public auction, as advertised in the Daily of the largest and most heavily armed. Construction housed offices, a room for holding concealed soldiers from enemy view filling room. Guards often protected National Republican, the U.S. Army sold whatever prisoners, and an area for mustering while taking defensive positions of all the forts followed the directivesthe fort of orGeneral about Abraham Lincoln visiting it whilemagazines, it and soldiers had to take materials and tools could be salvaged. Legend guards. outside the fort’s walls. John G. Barnard, the chief engineer for the U.S. Army special precautions handling black has it that lumber retrieved from the fort was was under construction.” powder. used to construct the house at 3311 North Glebe Corps of Engineers. Road, known as Bellevue. Walk down Old Glebe Road to view additional remaining earthworks and a 20-pounder Parrott Rifle. Lives of the Soldiers Headquarters Offices Commissary Store At the peak of the Civil War, as many as 1,000 Signal Officers Tree soldiers were garrisoned at Fort Ethan Allen. Quarters

The men who built and defended the fort belonged to volunteer Mess Barracks regiments recruited from New York, , and other House Officers Quarters Library of Congress The Bonds of War northern states. While stationed at Fort Ethan Allen, troops saw Soldiers at Camp McDowell, Arlington Heights, 1861. Often acquaintances or kin before the war, the little action, but continually trained, maintained their weapons, Barracks regiment became a soldier’s family away from home. Mess Cook When not working, soldiers played games, read, and and felled trees to keep a clear line of sight toward Chain Houses Barracks House occasionally visited nearby sights. War forged strong relationships that only ended with death in battle or Bridge and Leesburg Turnpike. old age after the war. Fort Ethan Allen Mess Houses Cook “This morning, we had to pitch our “He [Lincoln] will shake hands with a common soldier that he House tents in line and then wash up so as to be clean as possible for inspec- has never seen or heard of before with as much warmth and tion. Then I got a chance to go where I wanted to for a long time. friendship as he would with an old acquaintance.” Advantages of Fort Living I went in the direction of Fairfax Heavy artillery troops garrisoned at Fort Ethan Allen lived in — Venando Bruce, private, Fourth New York Heavy Artillery, barracks built just to the north of the fort, near present-day Military Courtesy of R. Ferris Randall, Courthouse.” Road. Infantrymen camped in tents further away from the fort. Eden, N.Y., and the Gladys August 7, 1862, writing about a visit to Fort Ethan Allen by Smith family — After serving at the fort, soldiers often headed to southern James B. Randall, sergeant, President Lincoln Co. F, 169th New York Volunteer campaigns where life on the field of battle was harsher than Infantry, October 1862 in the forts and camps around Washington, D.C.

Women at the Fort Fort Ethan Allen At Fort Ethan Allen and other posts, officers Headquarters Building often hosted their wives, children, or rela- Black crepe draped the fort’s administrative center as the nation tives during the winter season when the mourned the death of President armies went into winter camp. In addition, Lincoln on April 15, 1865.

forts had authorized laundresses, often Virginia Historical Society soldiers’ wives. One such wife added pie Walton H. Owen II making to her services, and ended up Officers Quarters at Fort Ethan Allen

Library of Congress making more money than her husband. One of the first forts built, Fort Ethan Allen initially Tent life of the 31st Infantry housed troops in tents erected inside the parapet at Queen’s Farm, near Fort Slocum, walls. Later, barracks, officers quarters, mess houses, Wahington, D.C. and cook houses were built outside the fort’s walls. Communications Along the Defensive Line Fort Ethan Allen was a repeating station, transmitting messages back and forth to other nearby stations. The forts that comprised the Defenses of Washington communicated by a series of signal stations: coded messages were relayed from station to station. U.S. Army records list 70 such stations in 1863. The soldiers who served in these stations had to learn new languages,

Library of Congress communicated by waving flags, blinking lights, flaring Members of the Signal Corps at Camp Red Hill, Washington, D.C. rockets, or through telegraphy. Each Union signal officer was issued a set of seven flags in red, black, and white, each with a contrasting center square. “It was a repeating station in every sense of the word. I gradually

Signal Tower, 1865 opened with other stations until the number of directly Stripped of its top and branches, a large chestnut tree served as a base for Fort Ethan Allen’s signal tower. The house at the base of the tree, which communicating was six. This compelled me to destroy the beauty housed the fort’s commanding officer, became the residence of the superior signal officer and finally the of the large chestnut . . .” Lt. J. Willard Brown, 1864 signal station. No trace of the signal tower remains.

Virginia Historical Society

A First in American Warfare Army in the Air Lowe, personally appointed by Presi- On September 24, 1861, Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, Chief of the dent Lincoln to head the army’s Balloon Corps of Aeronautics of the U.S. Army, launched a balloon Corps, commanded seven balloons and eight aeronauts. In the photos from from to direct artillery fire on Confederate left to right: operators fill the balloon soldiers three miles away in Falls Church. Aloft in the bal- Intrepid using portable hydrogen gener- ators; replenish Intrepid with air from loon, Lowe signaled trajectory instructions to soldiers on Constitution; and hold tether lines as the ground, who in turn relayed messages to gunners at Lowe (aloft) surveys enemy positions during the near Fort Ethan Allen. For the first time in warfare, gunners Williamsburg, Virginia, in May 1862. could accurately fire on an enemy they could not see. This The corps was disbanded in 1863. was the only offensive attack on Confederate troops from Library of Congress an Arlington fort. Library of Congress Library of Congress Protecting the Fort Fort Ethan Allen depended on more than its thick exterior walls to protect it from enemy attack. Stationed outside the fort, guards in sentry boxes checked unfamiliar wagons for valid passes before allowing entry to the fort. Underground bunkers with 12- to18- foot-thick walls and heavy timber roofs housed stores of ammunition, a guardhouse, and bombproof shelters for soldiers in the event of a

Library of Congress Library of Congress Confederate attack. Guards patrolled inside the fort Library of Congress Standing Guard Checking Orders Protect ing Ammunition Soldiers stand in formation by a wood As field officers and orderlies look on, A soldier guards the magazine and and stood watch from the fort’s parapets. sentry box outside the main gate at Colonel Robert Tyler examinse a dispatch filling rooms that held ammunition and . delivered to Fort Richardson. black powder at .

Illustration will be in full color