The Confederate flag, during the Civil War, never reached the United States Capitol, but a riot police carried one inside on Wednesday.

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One of the riot police, a mud man with a widow’s beak, was dressed more for a trip to the bar than for a revolution, but what stood out was the stick he was carrying, taller than him, with a standard flown to the Confederate rebellion. against the nation 160 years ago.

The man has not been identified. It is unknown where he went after the photographers took the photo. Although there were dozens of arrests on Wednesday, it is unclear whether the man is among them.

The capital’s defenses were “weakly manned”

Although versions of the Confederate flag have appeared in legitimate samples at the country’s legislative headquarters, the closest to the rebellion carrying a Confederate flag at the Capitol was about 6 miles, during the Battle of Fort Stevens. on 11 and 12 July 1864.
To be clear, the Battle of Beauregard flag (the red flag with the starry blue cross that was commonly abbreviated as the “Confederate flag” today) was not the official banner of the 1861 revolt. The 13-star design was used by the Second Confederate Navy and other military factions before being included in several iterations of the so-called national flag.

The version of the flag paraded through the Capitol on Wednesday was not so directly associated with the Confederacy in general until the late 1940s and early 1950s, as Dixiecrats withdrew in the face of the notion of civil rights and racial equality. Later, white supremacists adopted it as one of their emblems.

However, it was not until 2021 that an insurgent carried a rebellion flag to the American “citadel of freedom” to borrow the minting of the new president of the United States.

The Battle of Fort Stevens is the closest to the conquest of Washington DC, according to Smithsonian magazine. The South was mistreated, but on July 11, 1864, Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early sat on his horse in front of Fort Stevens, the dome of the Capitol according to him, and determined that the city’s defenses were “weakly manned,” according to the magazine. He wasn’t wrong.

At first he commanded the Second Army Corps of the Northern Virginia Army, which fought under a square version of the Confederate battle flag that used to be made today.
Its commander, General Robert E. Lee, suffered a slow, bloody defeat, and attacking the Union capital could offer Lee some respite, or at least convince Union General Ulysses S. Grant to divert some of it. his troops, who were hammering. Lee’s forces, Smithsonian reported.

Grant’s troops return when Early’s men stagger

Early ordered the commander of his leadership division to begin the attack on the U.S. capital. Thousands of cavalry, artillery and infantry, armed with 40 cannons, began their assault.

Grant, who had re-deployed many of Washington’s reinforcements, taking them into battle in Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, heard Early’s accusation and ordered 17,000 soldiers to return to the capital. Commanders sank walking wounded and scribes to grab rifles and join the untrained reserves that remained to defend the city.

At one point, one of Early’s commanders found a gap in the defenses that could have provided an avenue in the federal navy yard and its ships, the U.S. Treasury, and food, medicine, and ammunition stores. but Early had a problem: after defeating Union forces in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Frederick, Maryland, during the hot, dry summer, his troops were exhausted, too tired to walk, according to the Smithsonian.

Rioters portray the slaveholder John Calhoun, on the left, and the abolitionist Charles Sumner.

“General Early toured the loose formations, telling astonished, sweaty, dusty men that he would take them to Washington that day. They tried to lift old Rebel Yell to show him they were ready, but he came out cracked and thin.” , the magazine reported.

Before the men could muster their forces, some of Grant’s men returned to the city and opened a counterattack. Early and his men regrouped on the night of the 11th and before dawn, Early took off his field glasses to inspect the federal fortifications.

Instead of the new, sharp uniforms worn by scribes and wounding, he now saw men with a blue sky gone and dressed for war and “everywhere he saw fighting flags,” Smithsonian said.

“Therefore, he had to reluctantly give up all hopes of capturing Washington, having come to the sight of the Capitol dome,” Early wrote in his autobiography.

President Lincoln makes history

While Trump on Wednesday posted a video on social media that required strong fact-checking, President Abraham Lincoln traveled to the front line, albeit after Early resigned himself to defeat. Still, the rifles of the shooters cracked and the cannons grew. Lincoln “approached the parapet.” Generals and other military leaders begged him to cover himself as bullets “burst into the embankment,” Smithsonian magazine said.

Legend has it that one of these leaders was Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the future judge of the United States Supreme Court, who, not recognizing the emaciated Lincoln as his commander-in-chief, barked at the president: “Low, damn fool”

It was the only time an incumbent U.S. president was attacked in combat, according to the National Park Service.

Early ordered his men to stay in their place, looking dangerous, and after dark fell on the 12th, sometime after 10 p.m., he and his army fled to Virginia. And so no Confederate flag reached within 6 miles of the Capitol.

“While he failed to capture the national capital, he apparently liked the campaign,” explained Major Henry Kyd Douglas, “said the park service, which keeps Fort Stevens partially restored in the northern Brightwood neighborhood. west of Washington.

“On the evening of July 12, 1864, after deciding to retire from Washington, General Early gathered his staff and declared, ‘Major, we have not taken Washington, but we frightened Abe Lincoln like hell.’

Early was relieved of command in March 1865 and, after the war, fled to Mexico, then to Cuba, then to Canada, before returning – promised amnesty in hand – to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he resumed the war. its pre-war occupation. a lawyer and helped “work out the lost cause narrative,” the park service said.

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