Washington, D.C. narrowly escaped Confederate capture this week in what became known as the "Maryland Raid." General Jubal Early's rebel force, estimated at 7,000–8,000 strong, crossed the Potomac and attacked the capital's northern defenses on July 11–13, with fierce fighting centered around Fort Stevens on the Seventh Street road. Union defenders, bolstered by veteran reinforcements from the 6th Corps, repelled the assault through aggressive counterattacks that drove the Confederate skirmishers back over a mile and a half. By dawn on July 14, the raiders had vanished south of the Potomac, having destroyed roughly one million bushels of grain and torn up eight miles of railroad track. A taunt left near Francis P. Blair's residence—signed by the "58th Virginia Infantry"—warned President Lincoln to "be quiet" or face another invasion. Meanwhile, south of Charleston, the 55th Massachusetts Colored Infantry achieved a spectacular charge on James Island, overrunning a rebel battery and capturing two brass cannons despite murderous canister fire that killed seven men and wounded many more. Their heroism echoed the celebrated 54th Massachusetts, which had stormed Fort Wagner the previous year.

By July 1864, the Civil War had ground into its fourth year, with Union armies bleeding heavily at Petersburg and Atlanta. Early's raid was a calculated Confederate gambit to divert Grant's attention from Richmond and demonstrate that the North remained vulnerable. Though it failed militarily, it rattled Washington and exposed how thin the capital's defenses truly were. More significantly, this page captures a pivotal moment for African American soldiers: the 55th Massachusetts's fearless charge vindicated the decision to arm Black regiments and undermined racist claims that they lacked combat courage. Lincoln's government was increasingly dependent on Black soldiers—by war's end, nearly 180,000 would serve the Union cause.

• A book was found tacked to a tree near Blair's residence containing a message from Confederate soldiers claiming they only came to 'show you what we could do'—a taunting admission that the raid was partly psychological warfare rather than a genuine assault on the capital.
• The preservation of Francis P. Blair Sr.'s mansion was directly due to 'the interference of General Breckinridge,' suggesting that even amid invasion, some Confederate officers maintained aristocratic restraint and personal honor codes.
• A soldier named I. Thompson of the 55th Massachusetts, wounded in both the left arm and leg by canister fire, 'died shortly after being carried to the rear'—a stark reminder that amputations often meant death from shock or infection rather than battlefield wounds themselves.
• An advertisement from D.W. Hankins, a 'Counsellor at Law & Solicitor of Claims,' promises to procure $100 bounties for soldiers discharged due to battle wounds—revealing that financial desperation drove families to navigate Byzantine government claims processes during wartime.
• The State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester boasted a 'Cash Capital and Accumulation' of $472,000 in 1864—roughly $8 million today—demonstrating how Northern insurance firms prospered while Southern agriculture collapsed.

• General Jubal Early, mentioned here as leading the raid, would survive the war and become a bitter Lost Cause propagandist, writing extensively to justify the Confederacy. His account of this very campaign became a primary source for Lost Cause mythology—meaning this newspaper captured one side of a historical narrative he would spend decades trying to reshape.
• The 55th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, praised here for charging through retreating troops to capture the rebel guns, was recruited heavily from the North and Pennsylvania. Within a year, they would have lost over 100 men to combat and disease—their casualty rate among the highest of any regiment in the war.
• Fort Stevens, the 'strong work' mentioned repeatedly as the key to defending Washington's northern approach, sits today in a residential neighborhood in D.C. Lincoln himself visited it during the raid—the only sitting U.S. president under hostile fire during active combat.
• The two-gun battery captured by the 55th Massachusetts at James Island was likely a Napoleon 12-pounder, the Civil War's most effective field artillery. Armies desperately needed these captured guns; artillery shortages plagued the Confederacy throughout 1864.
• Secretary of the Navy Welles's reported plan to sink 'innumerable torpedoes in the mouth of Goose creek' (actually the Potomac River) reflects genuine panic—Confederate naval mines, called 'torpedoes' then, had already sunk or damaged dozens of Union vessels by this date.