A Cool Discovery

Way back in the fall of 1981, the first semester of my junior year in college, I participated in a wonderful program sponsored by American University called the Washington Semester. Students from colleges and universities all over the country send students to AU for this program. When I was there, there were 35 of us from my alma mater, Dickinson College, by far the most participants from any school. I did the foreign policy program, meaning that I did an internship two days per week, we had seminars around Washington two days per week, and Friday was reserved for a large independent study paper due at the end of the semester. At no time in my life did I learn more, study less, have more fun, or get better grades. It was a fabulous experience that I recommend highly.

AU’s campus is in the far northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., at Ward Circle, where Nebraska Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue intersect. It’s one of the nicest parts of the District, at the northern end of Embassy Row, near the new Russian Embassy and the Japanese Embassy, a few blocks down Wisconsin Avenue from Tennally Circle. The University sits on a plateau that rises from the Potomac River from Georgetown.

Tuesday night was a big party night, and the University had its own on-campus pub in the student union building, not far from Ward Circle. We spent a lot of fun Tuesday nights there, drinking cheap, bad beer, and doing the sorts of stupid things that college students do as a consequence of drinking cheap, bad beer.

What does this have to do with the Civil War, you ask? Good question.

In the course of working on the Monocacy project, J.D. and I have decided to focus on Early’s advance on Ft. Stevens and the probes of the defenses of Washington by his army. Brig. Gen. John McCausland commanded a brigade of Virginia cavalry attached to Early’s army. McCausland claimed that he actually penetrated the defenses of the Federal capital, and that he could see the Capitol from the high ground in front of an abandoned fort briefly held by his men. This is one of those intriguing little obscure incidents of the Civil War that catch my attention and which cause me to want to learn more.

McCausland’s account is tantalizing and at the same time frustrating. He does not name the fort that he claimed that he occupied, but claimed it was in or near Tennallytown. Most people who have looked at this incident have indicated that they believe it was Fort Gaines, which was located in the northwest quadrant of the city, and the fort with the highest elevation. However, recent historical detective work suggests that rather than Fort Gaines, the fort was actually Fort Reno, named for Maj. Gen. Jesse Reno, commander of the 9th Corps, and who had been killed during the September 1862 Battle of South Mountain. I’m convinced.

Fort Reno occupied precisely the same ground as the front portion of the American University campus. The dormitory where I stayed for the semester would have been located directly behind the spot occupied by Fort Reno. But for the high-rise apartment buildings that clutter the skyline and block the view of downtown Washington, you would be able to clearly see the Capitol dome from there. Therefore, although there are no historical markers to suggest that the university’s campus had historical significance, and I had no way of knowing it, I spent an entire semester living–and partying–on some very important historic ground that is directly relevant to our Monocacy project.

Just think…I might have been drinking bad beer on the very spot where McCausland stood and visually inspected the defenses of the Federal capital. And I never knew it.

We’ve decided that we definitely need to include this episode in the driving tour portion of the Monocacy study, which will take me back to AU’s campus for the first time in more than 20 years. Won’t that make for an interesting trip down memory lane?