Fort Bunker Hill: Defending Washington from the Northeast
Near Dc Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C.
In the fall of eighteen sixty-one, Union engineers threw up a string of earthwork forts in a ring around Washington to guard the capital from Confederate attack. Fort Bunker Hill was one of them, positioned between Fort Totten and Fort Lincoln on the northeastern approach to the city. It mounted thirteen guns and mortars covering the roads into town from Maryland.
At its peak the ring of defenses around Washington included sixty-eight forts and batteries connected by about thirty-two miles of military roads. Fort Bunker Hill played a specific role in the northeastern arc of that system. The forts were tested in earnest only once, at Fort Stevens in July of eighteen sixty-four, and their sheer strength discouraged any direct Confederate attempt on the capital.
