The roughhewn parapet beneath his sweaty hand as he leaned over to catch sight of the men in gray…
A bullet shrieked through the air and struck the man beside him…
…what happened next to Abraham Lincoln remains a source of speculation.
Some say Union General Horatio Wright, the man who invited Lincoln to view the fighting on that very parapet, therefore exposing him to enemy fire, “asked him to withdraw, which Lincoln did only after an officer standing near him had been wounded.”
Others say that a young Union officer and future Supreme Court Justice named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. manhandled Lincoln and shouted, “Get down, you damn fool!”
However it happened, and whoever grabbed Lincoln, one thing was for sure: on that day, July 12th, 1864, Abraham Lincoln became the first – and only – sitting President to come under direct and purposeful* fire from an enemy soldier. The site of this incident occurred on the parapet of Fort Stevens, located five miles north of the White House.
Fort Stevens was one of 68 forts that comprised a 37-mile defensive ring around the nation’s capital. Originally known as “Fort Massachusetts” and later renamed Fort Stevens in honor of Brig. Gen. Isaac Ingalls Stevens, killed at the Battle of Chantilly in 1862, the fort was built on land owned by the family of Elizabeth Thomas, a free black woman. The Union army requisitioned her property in September 1861, and by 1862, constructed resilient yet humble earthworks featuring 19 cannon and surrounded by a wooden parapet approximately four feet high.