Qualla: Fort Corcoran

Fort Corcoran: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Father Thomas Mooney was the chaplain of the 69th New York Volunteer Regiment, the Fighting Irish, and on a summer morning in 1861 he stood beside the freshly emplaced cannons of Fort Corcoran and baptized them. The men of the regiment, most of them Irish-born or first-generation, watched him bless the iron the way he might bless a child. The cannons received names, sprinklings of water, and brief prayers for their use. New York's archbishop, John Hughes, took a dim view of the sacrilegious action when news reached him and recalled Father Mooney to New York. The cannons remained at the fort. The Irish Brigade went on to fight at Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. The fort, perched above the Potomac at the southern end of the Aqueduct Bridge, watched the war from a safe distance until 1866, when it was finally torn down.

Read more: Fort Corcoran on Qualla

Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Fort Corcoran: Built in a Day

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US gov, Public domain. The morning after Virginia voted to secede on May 23, 1861, Union troops crossed the Potomac before dawn and occupied Arlington Heights. Over thirteen thousand soldiers marched into northern Virginia on May 24, accompanied by a long train of wagons filled with shovels, wheelbarro...

Read more: Fort Corcoran on Qualla

Image: US gov | Public domain

Fort Corcoran: The Confederate Army Did Not Quite Come

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mathew Brady, Public domain. Fort Corcoran was an outpost without a defensive ring at first. For seven weeks, Union engineer John Barnard could focus only on Corcoran and Runyon because no other defensive works existed on the Virginia side. When the rest of the army marched south to fight First Bull Run on J...

Read more: Fort Corcoran on Qualla

Image: Mathew Brady | Public domain

Fort Corcoran: The Balloon Corps

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain. What made Fort Corcoran more than just another earthwork was its role as the launching site for the Union Army Balloon Corps. The scientist and aeronaut Thaddeus S. C. Lowe demonstrated balloon reconnaissance to President Lincoln in June 1861 by ascending from the Mall and telegr...

Read more: Fort Corcoran on Qualla

Image: Mathew Benjamin Brady | Public domain

Fort Corcoran: The Telegraph Hub

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. By the second year of the war, Fort Corcoran had become a communications hub as much as a fortification. A July 1863 report on military telegraph operations counted six lines running from Fort Corcoran to the War Department in Washington, five lines to Fort Ethan Allen, two to Al...

Read more: Fort Corcoran on Qualla

Image: Public domain

Fort Corcoran: Nothing Left Above Ground

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ser_Amantio_di_Nicolao, CC BY-SA 3.0. Confederate forces never seriously threatened Fort Corcoran. Mosby's Rangers occasionally probed the Virginia defenses, and Jubal Early's 1864 raid stayed well to the north along the Maryland side. The fort was decommissioned in 1865 and dismantled in 1866. The timber was salvage...

Read more: Fort Corcoran on Qualla

Image: Ser_Amantio_di_Nicolao | CC BY-SA 3.0