forts in the Eastern Branch line. These roads were eventually widened into a large ring road that circled most of the 37-mile perimeter of Washington, which can be noted in the 1865 map of the city's defenses. In fall 1862, however, the commission examining the defenses noted that "the work on roads about Washington requires ten regiments for twenty days ... or an equivalent of labor in some other shape." An 1864 inspection by Brig. Gen. Albion P. Howe, Inspector-General of Artillery, found Fort Stanton to be well-equipped but the garrison poorly trained. The fort was armed with six 32-pounder barbettes, three 24-pounder field howitzers, four 8-inch siege howitzers, one Coehorn mortar, and one 4-inch rifled mortar. The ammunition was listed as "complete and servicible," but the 131 men of a single company of the Heavy Massachusetts Volunteer Artillery that comprised the garrison at the time were "not drilled in artillery; some in infantry." Following the Confederate raid on Washington that resulted in the Battle of Fort Stevens, new assessments were made of weak spots in Washington's defenses. In the three years between the construction of Fort Stanton and the attack on Fort Stevens, Fort Stanton's perimeter had been greatly increased with the addition of two subsidiary forts and additional rifle pits and trenches, as well as the completion of the military ring road. A report by Maj. Gen. Christopher C. Augur of the U.S. Volunteers recommended Fort Stanton receive one 32-pounder howitzer, two 4½-inch rifled guns, four 12-pounder howitzers, and two 12-pounder Napoleons to bolster its defenses and control its position at the center of the Eastern Branch defenses. In August 1864, Gen. Barnard was replaced in his capacity as chief engineer of the defenses of Washington by Lt. Col. Barton S. Alexander. With the war winding down, Alexander's duties consisted primarily of maintaining and expanding the already-existing defenses rather than building new forts as Barnard had done. An October 1864 report from Col. Alexander to Brig. Gen. Richard Delafield, head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, lists a series of improvements to Fort Stanton's already-impressive defenses. "Constructing three bastions, two new magazines, bomb-proofs, traverses, platforms, embrasures, grading glacis, and renewing abatis," the report reads. Post-war use After the surrender of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, the primary reason for garrisoned defenses protecting Washington ceased to exist. Initial recommendations by Col. Alexander,