the direction of U.S. Army engineers, the work progressed quickly, and the fort, which was constructed as several closely supporting redoubts, was completed before Christmas. General Barnard, in a report to General Totten, chief engineer of the U.S. Army was able to report "Forts Greble and Stanton are completed and armed;" on December 10, 1861. The fort was named for Lt. John Trout Greble, killed at the Battle of Big Bethel. The fort had a perimeter of 327 yards and places for 17 guns. A fall 1862 review of Washington's fortifications described Fort Greble as a "large and powerful work, well provided with magazines and bomb-proofs." Despite that praise, the report also recommended new gun platforms and protection for gun crews. The rapid completion of the fort did have some drawbacks, however. The fort lacked some of the refinements that would be present at later forts like Fort Foote. In 1864, civil engineer William C. Gunnell requested the removal of the wooden buildings that served as company quarters at Fort Greble so that the ammunition for the fort could be safely placed in magazines to be built in place of the shanties. There simply had not been time in 1861 to construct proper earthen magazines. This sort of constant renovation and improvement would continue throughout the war as forts were adapted to new purposes and new garrisons. Wartime use From the time of its construction, Fort Greble was never intended to serve as part of a continuous line of defenses stretching from the Potomac to Fort Lincoln at the extreme eastern end of the District of Columbia. Rather, the fort and its sister emplacements on the east bank of the Potomac were intended to deny the Confederacy the possibility of infiltrating guns across the Potomac in order to bombard the Washington Navy Yard. This fact is best illustrated by the 1862 report of the Commission on the Defenses of Washington, which was created by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to provide oversight to the Army Engineers constructing the defenses. Their report, released in December 1862, illustrated the isolated nature of the Eastern Branch defenses: In relation to this group of works, the Commission express the opinion that an enemy will not attempt to enter Washington from this direction, and that we cannot (as a general rule) expect to be able to meet him with a line of troops. What