advance toward achieving the inalienable rights and noble goals and values its founders sought, but had not fully achieved, in their lifetimes. (3) The defenses of Washington played a key role in the outcome of the Civil War. They were constructed at the beginning of the war in 1861 as a ring of fortifications in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and northern Virginia, to protect the Nation’s capital. By the end of the war, these defenses included 68 forts, 93 unarmed batteries, 807 mounted cannon, 13 miles of rifle trenches, and 32 miles of military roads. (4) The major test of the Civil War defenses of Washington came with the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 when Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early marched from Richmond to Lynchburg, Virginia, and through the Shenandoah Valley to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Frederick, Maryland. His major objective, as directed to him by General Robert E. Lee, was to attack the Nation’s capital from the north, causing Union Forces to be withdrawn from threatening Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. He was delayed by Union Major General Lew Wallace at the Battle of Monocacy on July 9, 1864, and was stopped at the northern edge of the District of Columbia at the Battle of Fort Stevens on July 11–12, 1864. The Shenandoah Valley Campaign ended when Union Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan defeated General Early at the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, on October 19, 1864. (5) The Battle of Fort Stevens was the second and last attempt by the Confederate Army to attack Washington. The first major effort to surround or capture the Nation’s capital ended at Gettysburg in July 1863. After that historic battle, in his address at Gettysburg Cemetery on November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln redefined what was at stake: a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not