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 perish from the earth. . (6) The Battle of Fort Stevens was the only verifiable time that a sitting United States President (Abraham Lincoln) came under hostile fire during a battle while in office. Nearly all the individual forts in the defenses of Washington (on both sides of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers) were involved in stopping General Early’s attack. Had that one battle at the very edge of Washington been lost, the Nation’s capital, the Presidency, the Union Government, and emancipation all would have been potentially lost and the history of the United States dramatically changed. The victory at Fort Stevens not only saved the city and the national government, but also led to the October 1864 victories for the Union in the Shenandoah Valley, which ensured Lincoln’s re-election and preservation of the Union at that critical moment. (7) After the end of the war, most of the Civil War defenses of Washington were returned to private land owners, but many were retained by the military or the lands were repurchased later by the United States. Of the remaining fortifications in public ownership, 19 sites (including Battleground Cemetery) are owned by the Federal Government and managed by the National Park Service, four are owned by local units of government in northern Virginia, and one is owned by Montgomery County, Maryland. (8) In 1902, the Senate McMillan Commission issued a Report on the Improvement of the Park System of Washington (U.S. Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, Senate Report No. 166, 57th Congress, 1st Session). The Report called for development of a Fort Drive to connect the Civil War defenses of Washington in the Nation’s capital. Congress appropriated funds to purchase lands for the Fort Drive during the 1930s, but it was never