Qualla: Fort Bayard (Washington, D.C.)

Fort Bayard (Washington, D.C.): Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Error9312, CC BY-SA 4.0. Philip Buckey was a farmer with a wife, four children, and two servants. He lived in a farmhouse near the corner of River Road and the Maryland line in what was then Washington County. In 1861 the War Department came to him and offered fifty dollars a year to use a piece of his land to build a fort. Buckey agreed. The Union Army cut down his trees, threw up earthen walls in the shape of a small circle 123 yards around, mounted six guns facing north along the road, and named the place Fort Bayard. Buckey stayed in his farmhouse through the war. He never lost the land, just the rent. The fort never fired a shot in anger. The piece of his farm the army borrowed is now a quiet city park.

Image: Error9312 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Bayard (Washington, D.C.): The Ring of Forts

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. After the disaster at First Bull Run in July 1861, Washington was almost defenseless. George B. McClellan, newly named commander of the Army of the Potomac, looked at the city's improvised earthworks and called them unable to offer a vigorous resistance to a respectable body of t...

Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Fort Bayard (Washington, D.C.): The General the Fort Was Named For

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LittleT889, CC BY-SA 4.0. George Dashiell Bayard was a cavalry officer who had grown up in Iowa and graduated from West Point in 1856. He was twenty-six years old at Fredericksburg in December 1862 and was about to be married. On December 13, the day Union forces were thrown back with terrible losses agai...

Image: LittleT889 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Bayard (Washington, D.C.): The Garrison That Was

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LittleT889, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fort Bayard was considered a rear-line fort, meaning that the planners did not expect it to be heavily attacked and did not assign a full infantry garrison. The artillerymen at the guns were permanent. The infantry that would have manned the walls in case of attack was supposed t...

Image: LittleT889 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Bayard (Washington, D.C.): The Battle That Did Not Come Here

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LittleT889, CC BY-SA 4.0. In July 1864, Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early led a corps of about fifteen thousand men into Maryland and then south toward Washington as part of a desperate strategy to relieve pressure on the Confederate forces around Petersburg. Early's column reached the outskirts ...

Image: LittleT889 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Bayard (Washington, D.C.): Boundary Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The earthworks were leveled, the timber salvaged, and the land returned to the Buckey family within a few years of the war's end. Tenleytown grew into a streetcar suburb in the 1890s. The neighborhood that absorbed the old fort site eventually became part of the District's Friend...

Image: Public domain