The Civil War Through the Camera - Henry W. Elson

GENERAL JUBAL A. EARLY,
THE CONFEDERATE RAIDER WHO
THREATENED WASHINGTON

“My bad old man,” as General Lee playfully called him, was forty-eight years of age when he made the brilliant Valley campaign of the summer of 1864, which was halted only by the superior forces of Sheridan. A West Point graduate and a veteran of the Mexican War, Early became, after the death of Jackson, one of Lee’s most efficient subordinates. He was alert, aggressive, resourceful. His very eccentricities, perhaps, made him all the more successful as a commander of troops in the field. “Old Jube’s” caustic wit and austere ways made him a terror to stragglers, and who shall say that his fluent, forcible profanity did not endear him to men who were accustomed to like roughness of speech?

THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON IN 1863

When the Capitol at Washington was threatened by the Confederate armies, it was still an unfinished structure, betraying its incompleteness to every beholder. This picture shows the derrick on the dome. It is a view of the east front of the building and was taken on July 11, 1863. Washington society had not been wholly free from occasional “war scares” since the withdrawal of most of the troops whose duty it had been to guard the city. Early’s approach in July, 1864, found the Nation’s capital entirely unprotected. Naturally there was a flutter throughout the peaceable groups of non-combatants that made up the population of Washington at that time, as well as in official circles. There were less than seventy thousand people living in the city in 1864, a large proportion of whom were in some way connected with the Government.