This is not a history of the civil conflict; its beginnings have been thus outlined only because they made so deep an impress on the future of Washington, which, from being generally regarded by the American people with comparative indifference, had become a center of interest for all the world. The city was not again seriously threatened with capture till July, 1864, when the Confederate General, Jubal A. Early, with a corps of seasoned soldiers, had worked his way around so as to descend upon it from the north. The news of his approach, spreading through the community, did not cause the consternation which might have been expected in view of the slight defensive preparation that had been made in the menaced quarter. Requisitions were sent to the army in Northern Virginia for such troops as could be spared. Wounded and discharged Union veterans shouldered their guns once more. The male nurses in the hospitals were drafted for active duty. A troop of cavalry was recruited among the civilian teamsters at work in the city. From all the executive Departments the able-bodied clerks were called out, armed with rifles or muskets as far as possible, and for the rest with pistols, old cutlasses, axes, shovels, and whatever other implements might be turned to emergency use, and ranged up on the sidewalks for elementary instruction and drill. Those who were least strong or most poorly armed were organized into a home-guard, to act as a last reserve if the Confederates succeeded in piercing a line of earthworks thrown out north of the city. Some of these fortifications can still be identified, though worn away by a half-century’s exposure to a variable climate, overgrown with trees and vines, and at intervals used as building sites. The most interesting of the chain is Fort Stevens, near the present Seventh Street Road, for there President Lincoln stood for hours under fire, refusing to go home as long as there seemed a chance that his presence could lend any inspiration to the men. The invading force was repulsed after a two days’ effort to break through, and Washington breathed freely once more. We come now to the concluding stage of the great struggle. Mr. Lincoln was reëlected in November, 1864, and inaugurated on the fourth of March, 1865, making the chief theme of his address a plea for generous treatment of the South. Within a month Richmond fell, and five days after that General Lee surrendered his army. There was great rejoicing in Washington over both these portents of peace, and parties of men and women paraded the streets after [Illustration: _Union Engine House of 1815_]