THE STORY OF TOM OWEN AN ADOPTED SON

 

    TOM OWEN, THE ADOPTED SON

Quentin Owen climbed a hill on his eight-acre parcel of land in Balsam Grove, North Carolina. He was carrying his Colt Model 1855 Revolving Rifle  and over his shoulder his squirrel rifle , a Remington Arms  single shot 22 rifle. He was ready for whatever game that he came across.  He had seen bear sign on a white oak by his barn and while he did not particularly care for bear meat, he felt safer with five rounds of 44 caliber ammunition loaded in his Colt revolving rifle. Colonel  Colt simply built a rifle based on a revolver pistol. The revolver easily swung out for unloading and loading with the press of a release button. Combined with a long barrel increased range and accuracy. He was still getting used to the rifle. With the Civil War raging , Colonel Colt upgraded the model 1855 rifle to use 56 caliber ammunition. Quentin especially liked the flip up sight of his Colt rifle.

 

 

Rufus Morgan was wounded in a skirmish down Atlanta way and medically discharged. He brought home a model 1855 Union issued 56 caliber rifle that he took off of a dead Union Soldier.  He refused to part with the Union Rifle.  His hope was to heal enough to rejoin his Jackson County regiment that was combining with a regiment in Knoxville, Tennessee

It was in the Spring of 1863 and plants and trees had started to bloom and green up. His wife, Amelia, was at a church meeting with some neighbor ladies working on a quilt for Morris McCall who had just lost his wife  Annie Mae to a long bout with pneumonia. Morris was in his early seventies, and he was simply lost without Annie May. He hobbled around on a twisted  knotty vine that he had turned into a walking cane. Church ladies regularly brought Morris covered dishes as he was never one to do more than boil an egg which usually turned out hard boiled. His closest relatives were in the east close to Kitty Hawk.

 

As Quentin approached the top of the hill, he spied a fat gray squirrel circling close to the top of an oak tree cutting acorns. He hunched down and unstrapped his 22 rifle and sighted on the squirrel. He was usually able to get a head shot so he waited patiently until the squirrel paused to look around, then he took his shot. As a kid, Quentin’s Dad would give him 5 or six 22 shells, and his instructions were to bring back 5 or 6 squirrels or a combination of squirrels  and shells. Over the years, Quention kept the family in squirrels and rabbits. The squirrels were combined with dumplings, and the rabbits were breaded and fried.

Quentin’s intentions were to add 3 or more squirrels to his bag but suddenly, here come his black and tan beagle  up the hill, nose to the ground, and making excited barking sounds. He scolded Van Winkle and headed back down the hill to home.

As he approached his house, he saw Amelia sweeping off the front porch. He gave her a hug and went to the kitchen to clean his squirrel. He unleased his guns and placed them on a rack. He would clean the 22 once he enjoyed another cup of coffee from the percolator.

Amelia came in with her broom and swatted him on the butt, He pulled her close and kissed her and said “Woman, get that squirrel in the pot.” Amelia said, “Only one squirrel?” Quentin smiled and said that Van Winkle had spoiled the hunt by barking. Van Winkle really liked to get his sleep and usually was laying on a tow sack just inside the barn. When he first got the beagle, it came without a name but Betsey, his eight-year-old started calling him Rip Van Winkle and his name was shortened to just Van Winkle. Van Winkle tangled with a red bone hound and had an injured hind leg, but he was still able to get along.

Betsey and her 5-year-old brother Jeb took loving care of Van Winkle to the point of spoiling him  which lessened his making a good hunting dog.

Quentin had been approached several times to join up and fight the Union soldiers. Now that Jeb was older, he was considering joining up. With the Union soldiers invading Northern Georgia and Western Tennessee, he went to a meeting in Brevard where Major Bill Wilson gave an update on the Union Advances.

Quentin had just turned 34 years old and was in good hardy condition. After talking with his brother, Caleb, to look after his family, he went to Brevard and signed up with the Transylvania Volunteers Company E. After a tearful goodbye to Amelia, Betsey, and Jeb, he saddled his palomino , Bandit , and rode out of his yard with tears in his eyes to head across the woods to Asheville to meet up with his regiment.

Instead of heading to Savanna to serve under General Vernon  Cable’s Engineering Battalion,  his regiment was dispatched to the Shenandoah valley of Virginia.  Since his unit was small in number, it was consolidated  with General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia . Quentin, after demonstrating his sharp shooting  ability was designated as a sniper and moved under the command of Ole Jube, Lieutenant General Jubal Early.  General Early was a tobacco spitting  crusty soldier who was West Point trained.

Initially, Quentin saw little battlefield action except for skirmishes with Union Pickett lines n patrols. In June of 1864, General Lee dispatched General Early with the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia scattered around the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia with orders to clear the Shenandoah Valley of Federals and if practical to do so invade  Maryland. A major goal of the planned  Maryland invasion was to disrupt the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad and if possible, threaten Washington D.C.

At the time General Ulysses S. Grant was threatening the Confederate capital .  General Lee’s strategy was to force General Grant to reduce and weaken his strength by having to send troops to defend Washington D.C. against General Early’s threat.

After driving off the Union Army of West Virginia  after the battle of Lynchburg on June 18^th , General Early’s Second Corps troops marched northward through the valley, towards Frederick arriving on July 7. They paused in a large apple orchard and had a small 4^th of July celebration with turkey and wild game feeding the hungry and tired troops.  Quentin asked his Captain if celebrating the 4^th of July was observing  a Federal holiday. His Captain replied, “The 4^th of July gave us the freedom that we are destined to protect .”

Quentin marched into Maryland on July 5 near Sharpsburg.  General Early turned the Corps east toward Frederick and they arrived there on July 7. They were moving at a fast pace, and the troops were worn out from the forced march.

July 9 was a hot sweltering day. Word came down to Quentin’s unit that they were to ready for a march on Washington. They met resistance from Major General Lew Wallace leading a small Union force made up of mostly garrison troops  later reinforced with two brigades of the Sixth Corp under the command of Major General James B. Ricketts. The two forces met in the Battle of Monocacy. Sometimes referred to as the Battle of Monocacy Junction which was roughly six miles from Frederick, Maryland.

Quention’s unit was supplied with ammunition and supplies for the Washington excursion and were ready for battle. The battle was part of Early's ongoing and widespread  raid through the Shenandoah Valley and into Maryland in an attempt to divert Union forces from their siege of Gen. Robert E. Lee's army at Petersburg, Virginia.^. General Early’s victory at Monocacy Junction  was the Northernmost Confederate victory of the war. 

The Union troops retreated to Baltimore, Maryland as General Early  advanced toward Washington after a day’s delay which resulted in Union reinforcements  having time to get to the Union capital  before Quentin’s Second Corps troops. General Early launched his  16,000-troop attack on Washington on July 12 at the Battle of Fort Stevens.

 

General Early's attack,  which was less than 4 miles  from the White House, caused consternation in the U.S. government, but reinforcements under Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright and the strong defenses of Fort Stevens minimized the threat. Early withdrew after two days of skirmishing after attempting no serious assaults. Then U.S. President Abraham Lincoln personally observed the battle's fighting.

Quenton and three other snipers were moved close to Fort Stevens to pick off Union Commanders. Quenton spied President Lincoln atop the ramparts with a spyglass. He aimed carefully  and flipped his sights and aimed high due to the distance. His bullet pierced  Lincoln’s beaver skin top hat.

Behind the breastworks, a busy young captain from Massachusetts named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. glanced up, saw a tall, awkward civilian standing in the spray of bullets and snapped, “Get down, you damn fool, before you get shot.” Only then did the future Supreme Court justice realize that he was berating the President.

One distraction during  the Fort Stevens battle was that many of the Confederate troops had looted the home of Montgomery Blair, the son of the founder of Silver Spring, Maryland. They found barrels of whiskey in the basement of the mansion, called Blair Mansion, and many troops were too drunk to get a good start in the morning. This allowed for further fortification by Union troops    

 

 Around 3 p.m., with the bulk of their force present, the Confederates commenced skirmishing, probing the defense maintained by Brig. Gen. Martin D. Hardin's division of the XXII Corps with a line of skirmishers backed by artillery. Near the start of the Confederate attack the lead elements of the VI and XIX Corps arrived at the fort, reinforcing it with battle-hardened troops. The battle picked up around 5 p.m. when Confederate cavalry pushed through the advanced Union picket line. A Union counterattack drove back the Confederate cavalry, and the two opposing lines confronted each other throughout the evening with periods of intense skirmishing. The Union front was aided by artillery from the fort, which shelled Confederate positions, destroying many houses that Confederate sharp shooters used for protection.

President Lincoln, his wife Mary, and some officers rode out to observe the attack, either on July 11 or July 12, and were briefly under enemy fire that wounded a Union surgeon standing next to Lincoln on the Fort Stevens parapet. Lincoln was brusquely ordered to take cover by an officer, possibly Horatio Wright, although other probably apocryphal stories claim that it was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Private John A. Bedient of the 150th Ohio Infantry, the fort commander, other privates of the Ohio National Guard, or Elizabeth Thomas.^{[18][19][20][21]}

Additional Union reinforcements from the VI and XIX Corps arrived overnight and were placed in reserve behind the line. The skirmishing continued into July 12, when Early finally decided that Washington could not be taken without heavy losses which would be too severe to warrant the attempt. Union artillery from Fort Stevens attempted to clear out Confederate sharpshooters hidden in the buildings and fields in front of the fort; when the artillery fire failed to drive them off, the VI Corps brigade of Daniel Bidwell, supported by Oliver Edwards' brigade and two Veteran Reserve Corps regiments, attacked at about 5 p.m. The attack was successful, but at the cost of over 300 men. VI Corps member Elisha Hunt Rhodes recalled:

Quentin was on the roof of a two-story house close to the fort. He was taking pot shots at the officers on the ramparts of the Fort. Suddenly, a howitzer shell hit the building midpoint, and Quentin was thrown off the roof onto a grassy area. He suffered a broken left leg and two broken ribs. His unit’s medical section evacuated him on a stretcher. He was placed on a commandeered wagon and moved to the rear of the attacking forces. He held firmly to his Colt revolver rifle and was transported back into Virginia over the next few days for recovery.

One of Quentin’s Transylvania volunteers wrote the following note in his journal.

We marched in the line of battle into a peach orchard in front of Fort Stevens, and here the fight began. For a short time, it was warm work, but as the President and many ladies were looking at us, every man tried to do his best. Without our help the small force in the forts would have been overpowered. Jubal Early should have attacked earlier in the morning, but Early was late.

 

Early's force withdrew that evening, headed back into Montgomery County, Maryland, and crossed the Potomac River on July 13 at White's Ferry into Leesburg, Virginia. The Confederates successfully brought the supplies they seized during the previous weeks with them into Virginia. Early remarked to one of his officers after the battle, "Major, we didn't take Washington, but we scared Abe Lincoln like hell." Wright organized a pursuit force and set out after them during the afternoon of the 13th.

Quentin  stayed in a field hospital close to Richmond until his leg was mended. Then he was given a furlough due to his injuries and allowed to go home for three weeks.

After lying in an understaffed Confederate field hospital for weeks eating salted pork and stale bread with water, Quentin was overjoyed to regain his ability to walk. The surgeon who reset his leg took a small portion of bone out which caused a noticeable limp.  The broken ribs were still painful, and he was released from the hospital with a tight wrapping around his ribcage. He traveled south on train initially to Atlanta. Then he purchased a horse to travel the last 150 miles to his house in Transylvania County.

He stopped in Brevard and traded his Army mount for his beloved palomino, Bandit who had been well taken care of by the garrison troops at Brevard.

When he got to Rosman, he stopped at the general store and bought a pickled ear of corn, a pint of moonshine and an overcooked hot dog. He then set off across the mountain toward Balsam Grove. He traveled over some old Indian paths. As he was weaving the meandering paths toward home, he passed by a thick huckleberry path and Bandit came to a stop. Then he heard a sound like a wounded animal, a sobbing whimpering sound  that seemed to be coming from within the huckleberry patch alongside the trail. He pulled his Colt 1911 model 45 from his holster and approached the bushes. He parted the bushes and discovered a small boy lying on the ground. He appeared to be somewhere around 5 or 6 years old and was dressed in ragged clothes. His shirt was tattered and worn, and he was scared and looked up at Quentin with large brown eyes. He covered his head with his hands. Quentin bent down beside the boy and took his canteen from his belt and held it out to the boy. The boy’s hands were shaking as he took the canteen and gulped the water so fast that he took a coughing spell. Quentin took the boy in his arms and parted the bushes to where Bandit was munching on some grass on the side of the trail. He rummaged through his saddlebags and took out some venison jerky that he had been given at the Brevard Post.. He waited until the boy ate the jerky and finished emptying Quentin’s canteen. He tried talking to the boy but all he could gather was a few words of Mama and lost. The boy’s face was dirty and streaked with tears. After the boy settled down and stopped shaking, Quentin hoisted him up on Bandit and got back on the trail.

As Quentin made his way down the hill to his house, he saw Amelia hanging clothes on the line by the barn. As he rode into the yard, Amelia heard him and turned. She dropped her basket of clothes and seemed to collapse. When Quentin got to her, she was wiping her eyes with her apron. He picked her up from the ground and they hugged with tears running from both of them.

Finally, Quentin turned loose of Amelia and went to Bandit. The boy was sitting on the horse in a slump. Quentin took him off Bandit and carried him into the house. He looked around for his children and turned to Amelia who was staring at the boy that Quentin placed on the couch. Where are the children asked Quentin. Who is the little boy asked Amelia. Amelia said the kids are with your brother helping pick the field corn. Who is the boy, she repeated.  I found him abandoned in the woods down about Alligator Rock. He needs food and some clothes. Amelia went into the bedroom and returned with a shirt and pants that Jeb had outgrown, She fired up the woodstove and placed a cooker of stew to warm. She lifted the lid of the upper storage compartment and took out a couple of biscuits and a big chunk of cornbread.  While Quentin dressed the boy , she went to the branch behind the barn and brough a jug of buttermilk back. She ladled out a big bowl of stew and placed the biscuits and cornbread by the boy’s bowl of stew. Within minutes, the boy’s stew bowl was empty and only crumbs remained of the bread. Amelia looked across the table and asked Quentin, “What are we going to do with a little Black boy?” I reckon we will keep him since he ain’t got no family, said Quentin. They both looked at the small boy who had laid his head on the table and fell fast asleep.

Amelia and Quentin named the boy Tom after a cousin who had been killed at Shiloh. Tom grew up as part of the Owen family, and he became known as Tom Owen. He hoed corn in the bottom field, helped Amelia with the family garden, and played with his adopted brothers and sisters. He loved spending time with Quentin’s brother Caleb who he called Uncle Cab. He fished and swam  in the French Broad River. He explored the Indian trails in the surrounding mountains and found many arrowheads. He went on camping trips with the Owen family, and he sat in front of the fireplace as Daddy Quentin read stories to the children in the evenings after a hard day in the fields.

He became a skilled hunter and with Quetin’s 22 rifle, brought home many a squirrel for Amelia to cook with tasty dumplings and cornbread.  

Quentin returned to the Brevard regiment after his furlough ended and was reassigned to the regiment as part of the garrison troops. He met fellow soldiers that became lifetime friends. When Lee surrendered his forces, he was discharged and returned to his family.

Pete had grown quite tall. He towered above the other children at the one room schoolhouse at Balsam Grove. He sang in the Church of God choir and was selected to teach Sunday school to the younger children. When Quentin went to Brevard for feed supplies for his cows and hogs, people would always ask about Tom.

Tom drove the wagon to town with Quentin when he was around 18 and they stopped for lunch at a little café across form the Courthouse. There was a pretty young Black girl who waited their table. Tom kept raising his coffee cup and they young waitress quickly brought the coffee pot to his table. By the Tom and Daddy Quentin finished lunch, Tom was very full of coffee and extremely smitten. Eventually, Tom ended up marrying Rosilee and moved to Brevard. He got a job at the sawmill and went to night school and received a law degree. He never made much money lawyering because most of his clients had no money. Some paid with chickens or pigs, some did not pay at all.

One payment was an old guitar, and Tom became quite adept at playing it. He would go to the Community Center and play and sing with other musicians. He had a rich baritone voice, and his gospel songs were the favorites of the audience.

On a visit to visit his adopted family, Quentin took a magazine and read some stories about the civil war to his adopted family. One of the stories was about the Amelia Courthouse. The courthouse is located in the county of Amelia County  in the State of Virginia.. The town was named after  Princess Ameilia of Great Britain, the second daughter of King George II in 1735.

 

Tom read a shot story about the battle of Fort Stevens in which Daddy Quentin fought entitled “Paroxysms of hysteria in the city”

 

            Abraham Lincoln himself visited the fort and watched the sinuous dust clouds raised by enemy columns approaching from the northwest. "In his long, yellowish linen coat and unbrushed high hat," an Ohio soldier who had seen him at the fort wrote, "he looked like a care worn farmer in time of peril from drouth and famine." Far away to the south, the relentless Grant had refused to be distracted from his slow strangulation of Lee's army. On the whole, Lincoln approved; he had, after all, tried for three long years to find a general who would devote himself to destroying the enemy armies instead of striking attitudes and defending Washington. But it must have occurred to the President, that afternoon, that maybe Grant had gone too far.

Reinforcements were on the way, to be sure. As soon as he realized what Early was up to, Grant dispatched two veteran VI Corps divisions—11,000 strong and diverted to Washington 6,000 men of XIX Corps. The transports were not far downstream from the city, Lin­coln knew, but Jubal Early had arrived. His 4,000 cavalry and artillerymen were harassing the Federal line for miles in either direction; he had 10,000 infantrymen and 40 cannon, and his skirmishers were already chasing the Federal pickets back into the fortifications.

Confronted by what they had so long feared—actual danger—the civilians of Washington went into paroxysms of hysteria, telling each other that a Confederate army "50,000 strong" was laying waste to Maryland and Pennsylvania. Military and political functionaries, meanwhile, went berserk.

Everyone took charge of everything. The military department was commanded by Maj. Gen. Christopher Augur; but the Army Chief of Staff, Henry Halleck, ordered Maj. Gen. Quincy Gillmore to take charge in the emergency; but the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, had called in Maj. Gen. Alexander McCook to handle the crisis; but General in Chief Grant had sent Maj. Gen. E.O.C. Ord to save the situation.

When yet another general, who for some reason was relaxing in a New York City hotel, sent word that he would be available for duties commensurate with his rank, Chief of Staff Halleck blew up. "We have five times as many generals here as we want," he responded, "but are greatly in need of privates. Anyone volunteering in that capacity will be thankfully received."

Everyone thought of something. Halleck had the hospitals checked for potentially useful walking wounded, so they could be formed up and marched toward the fortifications. On the way they probably stumbled into a ragged formation of clerks from the offices of the Quartermaster General, Brig. Gen. Montgomery Meigs, who had decided that now was the time for them to exchange their pencils for rifles. Someone else made preparations for destroying the bridges over the Potomac River. A steamboat was fired up and held ready to get the President away.

A restless tattoo of musketry

But the President was singularly serene. "Let us be vigilant," he telegraphed to an overwrought Baltimore committee, "but keep cool. I hope neither Baltimore nor Washington will be sacked." Yet on that sultry afternoon, with the earth trembling to the bark of the big guns, with the acrid smell of black powder hanging in the stifling air and a restless tattoo of musketry sounding along the lines, keeping cool could not have been easy.

Both the Federal defenses and the Confederate threat looked stronger than they were. "Undoubtedly we could have marched into Washington," wrote one of Early's division commanders, Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon. "I myself rode to a point on those breastworks at which there was no force whatsoever. The unpro­tected space was broad enough for the easy passage of Early's army without resistance."

Just beyond this inviting gap lay the legislative and administrative heart of the enemy government. What is more, there was the Federal Navy yard, with its ships to burn; the United States Treasury with its millions of dollars in bonds and currency, the seizure of which would have had catastrophic effects on the Northern economy; warehouse after warehouse of medical supplies, food, military equipment, ammunition-all scarce and desperately needed in the Confederacy. In short, a rich city, virgin to war, awaiting plunder.

Not to mention the incalculable humiliation to the Union if such a rape of its capital occurred. Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace (later the author of Ben Hur) had been stiffened to make his desperate stand against Early on the Monocacy, he wrote afterward, by a vision of "President Lincoln, cloaked and hooded, stealing from the back door of the White House just as some gray-garbed Confederate brigadier burst in the front door."

But for the moment, at least, the enormous prize was out of reach. The problem was not a lack of will or courage or even firepower; the problem was something that civilians and historians rarely think of as part of war-simple fatigue. Early's foot soldiers were just too tired to walk that far.

During the hottest and driest summer anyone could remember they had marched about 250 miles from Lynchburg in three weeks. They had fought hard at the Monocacy on July 9, then after burying their dead had marched again at dawn, struggling 30 miles in the searing heat to bivouac near Rockville, Maryland. The night of the 10th brought so little relief from the heat that the exhausted men were unable to sleep. On the l lth, with the sun burning more fiercely than ever, they had begun to give out.

rasped out his orders to Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes, commander of the leading division: throw out a skirmish line; move forward into the enemy works; attack the capital of the United States.

A few months before, there had been 18,000 trained artillerymen manning the 900 guns and guarding the 37 miles of fortifications that ringed Washington. Grant had taken those men for harsher duty in the trenches in front of Petersburg, and now, on the threatened north side of the barrier Potomac, there were on the line no more than 4,000 frightened home guardsmen and militiamen.

General Early rode along the loosening formations, telling staggering, sweating, dust-begrimed men that he would take them into Washington that day. They tried to raise the old Rebel Yell to show him they were willing, but it came out cracked and thin. The mounted officers reluctantly slowed their pace, but before midday the road behind the army was littered with prostrate men who could go no farther.

Thus, when Early ordered General Rodes to attack, both men—on horseback—were far ahead of the plodding columns. While Early fumed and spat tobacco juice, his officers struggled to get men and guns in position. They managed to mount a skirmish line to chase in the Federal pickets, but putting together a massed line of battle was beyond them. The afternoon wore on, and to Early every hour was the equivalent of a thousand casualties.

It was not the fault of his men. General Gordon later wrote of them that they possessed, “a spirit which nothing could break.”

Nor was it a failure of the officers; Jubal Early had for subordinate commanders some of the best generals in the Confederacy. John Gordon and John Breckinridge were, like Early, lawyers and politicians who lacked his West Point training but had shown a remarkable ability to lead men in combat. Breckinridge was a former Vice President of the United States and a candidate for President in 1860, who came in second to Lincoln in the electoral vote; now he was second in command of an army advancing on the US. capital. Stephen Dodson Ramseur, a major general at 27, possessed a ferocity in battle that usually got results.

No one embodied more of the paradoxes of this war than John Breckinridge. A passionate and lifelong champion of the Union and the Constitution, he had been convinced for years that slavery could not and should not survive; but he also believed that it was unconstitutional for the national government to prohibit slave states from participating in the country’s booming Western expansion—the settlement of the territories.

For his constitutional arguments he was ostracized in the Senate and described as a traitor to the United States; back in Kentucky he pleaded with his state to stay out of the spreading civil war. Union military authorities ordered his arrest. Thus, John Breckinridge had been left with nowhere to go but into the armies marching against the Union, on behalf of slavery.

Such were the men who stood at Jubal Early’s side that afternoon. Before he could form his gasping troops and launch his attack, Early saw “a cloud of dust in the rear of the works toward Washington, and soon a column of the enemy filed into them on the right and left, and skirmishers were thrown out in front.” Artillery fire opened from a number of batteries.

The Confederates had managed to take a few prisoners, who freely admitted that their lines were being held by “counter jumpers, hospital rats and stragglers.” But the men just arriving were veterans, perhaps reinforcements from Grant. Jubal Early was bold, but he was not foolhardy; however tempting the prize, he would not commit to battle without knowing what he was facing. As he wrote later, “It became necessary to reconnoiter.”

The Federal regiment that had impressed Early was from Grant’s Army of the Potomac, but it was alone. Meanwhile, however, Abraham Lincoln had spotted something really interesting in his spyglass and driven eagerly south to the Sixth Street wharves.

Marching off in the wrong direction

He arrived in midafternoon and stood quietly gnawing on a chunk of hardtack while Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright assembled the first 650 arrivals from VI Corps and marched them off—in the wrong direction—toward Georgetown. With great shouting and clatter, some staff officers got the men turned around and headed up 11th Street, toward the enemy.

A Vermonter named Aldace Walker marched with VI Corps that day. He thought it was still morning, and had his dates confused, but he remembered how the presence of the capable Old Sixth brought “intense relief to the constitutionally timid Washingtonians. . . .Citizens ran through the lines with buckets of ice-water, for the morning was sultry; newspapers and eatables were handed into the column, and our welcome had a heartiness that showed how intense had been the fear.”

The official welcome was less clear-cut. To his disgust, Wright was ordered to hold his men in reserve, even though the raw troops at Fort Stevens were being severely pummeled by Early’s guns and skirmishers, and were already showing signs of caving in. In the end, the only thing the soldiers did that night (and this only because Wright insisted on it) was to move out in front of the fortifications to restore a picket line and push back enemy skirmishers. “The pseudo-soldiers who filled the trenches around the fort were astounded at the temerity displayed by these war-torn veterans in going out before the breastworks,” Walker remembered scornfully, "and benevolently volunteered most earnest words of caution.”

Apparently the Federal high command did little that night but further confuse each other. Charles Dana, an Assistant Secretary of War and an old friend of Grant’s, sent a despairing wire to the commanding general Tuesday morning: “General Halleck will not give orders except as he receives them; the President will give none, and until you direct positively and explicitly what is to be done, everything will go on in the deplorable and fatal way in which it has gone on for the past week.”

On Monday night, Early and his division commanders gathered at their captured headquarters, “Silver Spring,” the imposing mansion of the prominent Washington publisher and politician Francis Preston Blair (and a former political patron of John Breckinridge). There the Confederate officers had dinner, a council of war and a party. Men were still straggling in from their hellish march, and it seemed a precious opportunity had been lost the previous afternoon. But the Federal works were still not manned in strength, and Early ordered an assault at first light.

A sound of revelry by night

His officers raided Francis Blair’s wine cellar and talked about what they would do next day. They joked about escorting John Breckinridge back to his former place as presiding officer of the Senate. Outside, soldiers speculated about how they would divide up the contents of the Treasury. According to General Gordon, one private was asked what they would do when they took the city, and said the situation reminded him of a family slave whose dog chased every train that came by. The old man wasn’t worried about losing his dog, said the soldier, he was worried about what the dog was going to do with a train when he caught one.

It was all good fun, but soon daylight was coming.

General Early was up before dawn, surveying the Federal fortifications with his field glasses. The trenches and the parapets teemed with blue uniforms—not the dark, new blue of fresh, untested cloth, but the faded sky-blue of well-used material. Everywhere he saw fluttering battle flags bearing the Greek Cross of VI Corps. The door to Jubal Early’s niche in history had just slammed shut.

“I had, therefore, reluctantly to give up all hopes of capturing Washington, after I had arrived in sight of the dome of the Capitol,” he wrote. But they could not give any sign of flinching with that many soldiers ready to pour after them. They would stay in place, look as dangerous as they knew how, and as soon as darkness covered them head back to Virginia. The Federals, meanwhile, made ready to fight a climactic battle for the city. They did it in the time-honored Washington way—with endless meetings, The day wore on, the baking heat returned, the sharpshooters let fly at anything that stirred, the cannon boomed from time to time—and nobody moved.

The citizens of Washington regained their courage. Ladies and gentlemen of society and rank declared a holiday and swarmed out to picnic and cheer the intrepid defenders. Some perhaps had been among the picnickers who, three years before, had gone to cheer the boys going into battle at Bull Run, but if they remembered the bloody stampede that had engulfed the tourists on that day, they gave no sign.

At midafternoon they were joined by the President and Mrs. Lincoln, who arrived at Fort Stevens in a carriage. General Wright went out to greet the Commander in Chief and casually asked if he would like to see the fight; the various Chieftains had at last agreed to try a reconnaissance in force, to press the Confederates back and see just how strong they were. General Wright intended his question to be purely rhetorical, but as he wrote later, “A moment after, I would have given much to have recalled my words.”

Delighted at the prospect of seeing actual combat for the first time, Lincoln bounded up to the parapet and stood looking over the field, his familiar, top-hatted form an inviting target for Confederate sharpshooters. While Wright begged the President to take cover, a trooper in Lincoln’s cavalry escort saw bullets “sending little spurts and puffs of dust as they thudded into the embankment on which he stood.” Thus, for the first and only time in history a President of the United States came under fire in combat.

Behind the breastworks, a busy young captain from Massachusetts named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. glanced up, saw a tall, awkward civilian standing in the spray of bullets and snapped, “Get down, you damn fool, before you get shot.” Only then did the future Supreme Court justice realize that he was berating the President.

Meanwhile a VI Corps brigade, about 2,000 strong, was sneaking out of Fort Stevens and taking position in a wooded area 300 yards east of what is now Wisconsin Avenue, just behind the line of Federal skirmishers and out of sight of the enemy. Their orders were to make a surprise charge at the Confederate positions on the wooded ridge less than a mile from Fort Stevens.

Lincoln watched these maneuvers intently, standing fully exposed on top of the parapet, oblivious to the leaden hail. General Wright stood at the President’s side, along with C.C.V. Crawford, the surgeon of one of the attacking regiments. Suddenly, a round ricocheted off a nearby soldier’s rifle and into Crawford’s thigh. Gravely wounded, he was carried to the rear.

General Wright, beside himself, ordered everyone off the parapet, and when the President ignored him threatened to have a squad of soldiers forcibly remove Lincoln from danger. “The absurdity of the idea of sending off the President under guard seemed to amuse him,” Wright recalled, and more to put an end to the fuss than anything else, Lincoln finally agreed to sit behind the parapet and thus place most of his frame behind cover. But he kept leaping to his feet to see what was happening.

When the attacking regiments were in position, the guns of Fort Stevens opened a sustained fire on the enemy positions. The 36th shot, fired at about 6 p.m., was the signal for the picket line to plunge forward. Behind it, appearing as if from nowhere, surged thousands of howling Federals.

“I thought we were ‘gone up,’” one of Early’s staff officers remembered. But these were men familiar with death, and they opened a fire so hot that the Federals came to a halt and sent for reserves. The enemy, the Federal division commander reported, “was found to be much stronger than had been supposed.”

There was cheering from the spectators and joking in the rear echelons, but this was no game; Aldace Walker remembered it as a “bitter little contest.” Every regimental commander in the leading Federal brigade was shot down; a hundred Confederate dead were later found lying on the field between Fort Stevens and the Blair house. Heavy fighting continued until 10 P.M., even though General Wright ordered his men to hold their ground but not to storm the Confederate lines.

Major Douglas found Jubal Early in Francis Blair’s mansion after dark, getting ready to pull out. “He seemed in a droll humor, perhaps one of relief,” Douglas recalled, “for he said to me in his falsetto drawl, “Major, we haven’t taken Washington, but we’ve scared Abe Lincoln like hell!”’ And so, with hollow laughs they began a long retreat, away from legend and glory, into Virginia, where Appomattox waited.

A half-mile north of the crumbling remains of Fort Stevens, the asphalt and concrete environs of Georgia Avenue are interrupted by another unremarkable, postage-stamp square of green. Hardly larger than a townhouse lot, it is a National Cemetery, wherein are buried a few of the men for whom this “bitter little contest” was the last. Some earnest monuments to the men of New York and Ohio are crowded together here, but the most imposing thing one sees on entering is a bronze plaque. It memorializes not the dead, but an 1875 order prohibiting picnicking on, and otherwise defacing, their graves. Forgetfulness came quickly.

This article was originally published in Smithsonian magazine in July 1988. The National Park Service offers a number of upcoming activities in recognition of the 150th anniversary of Jubal Early's attack on Washington.

Amelia particularly liked Tom’s story regarding Amelia County in Virginia. After reading the magazine stories, Tom hitched his wagon up and gathered his pretty wife up and returned to their small home in Brevard.

When Quentin died at the ripe old age of 67, Tom brought his old guitar to the gravesite and sang Amazing Grace and Peace in the Valley for Daddy Quentin.     Quentin left his beloved revolver rifle to his adopted son, Tom who later left it to his son, Quentin Caleb Owen. Amelia died the following year, and Quentin paid for and installed her tombstone. He built a little roof over her grave and visited often with wildflowers he picked on the mountain trail.

Tom Owen lived until he was 81 years old. His funeral was held at the Balsam Grove Church of Christ where he sang in the choir and taught Sunday School. The funeral was one of the biggest held in the area with over a hundred people attending and paying tribute to the adopted son of Amelia and Quentin Owen.  Oldtimers still recall and tell the stories about the little Black boy found in the woods left behind  and abandoned by his family  in the melee of the Black people heading North to escape slavery. Tom Owen lived a full life with a loving family.