enters its final months and the political parties prepare for their convections, c-span will air the contenders. featuring 14 key political firls who ran for president and lost, but impacted american political history. we'll air the series every weekend on sundays 8:00:30 a.m., 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. eastern. all here on american history tv on c-span3. join us as historians preview the series on saturday, june 2nd at 10:00 a.m. eastern. >> i work a lot now especially on sort of the build of our new site with this younger generation of digital natives. from their point of view they feel like old media is insufficiently fact checked. any that drives them crazy is anything that doesn't have a link to the source. being inaccurate with your sourcing is much harder online than it is in print. you can go check that link right

away. and i think the internet community keeps you a lot -- can keep you a lot more honest. >> our coverage of a panel on journalism and digital media by the columbia journalism review was the most watched event in the past week at the c-span video library with 20,000 views. plus you can, you can clip portions of the event, email and blog post at cspan.org/videolibrary. each week american artifacts takes viewers to sites around the country. at the outbreak of the civil war this the spring of 1861 washington, d.c. was a lightly defended city and vulnerable to attack. with only one fort 12 miles south of the city. and the confederate state of virginia across the potomac river. by 1865 the nation's capital had become the most fortified city in the world with a ring of 70 armed forts and batteries

circling the city. we visited three of the surviving forts with dale floyd. >> right now we are in the museum at fort ward with a variety of artifacts in it. one of the thins they have a map of the defense of washington. we are at fort ward which is here. today we are are also going to go to fort foot, which is down here and all the way up to fort stevens which is up there. the reason that the forts were built was basically to protect the capital of the united states.

it first started in may of 1861. soon after virginia succeeded from the union. after the first battle of ma nas sas in july of 1861 in which is union was actually defeated, the men came streaming back into the city. literally the confederates could have talked into the city. after that fear more and more fortifications were built. general john g. barnard was in charge of them for almost the whole war started developing a system of fortifications around the capital and how they would actually defend the city from enemy invaders.

after second ma nas sas which was a union defeat. fear again and more impetus to make sure that the fortifications defending washington were doing their job. over the years, the forts were changed. they were made larger. guns were changed to get the best function out of each fort and out of the system itself. the defenses were tested in july of 1864. now before i say that, there were raids on the forts guerrilla forces where they'd come in and steal horses or supplies or whatever. but the only real attack and it really wasn't an attack it was a reconnaissance in force took place july 11th and 12th, when jubal early marched up through

the valley fought out monocacy and marched towards washington on the northern side. came up and faced these forts up there. the main one fort stevens when abraham lincoln came out to watch what was going on. he was not successful. he realized he really couldn't do what he wanted to do. and he turned around and went back down into the valley. after that basically nothing really tested the fortifications after that. besides the forts themselves, you had the batteries that were on both sides or the rear of the forts. you also had trenches that connected the forts all the way around the city. you can see up here where in between you had the covered ways going all the way from one fort

to the next to the next battery and on. so that troops could move back and forth without actually being seen. now besides the forts, they also built other types of defenses such as block houses in certain places along railroads to channel attacks and they had other things that they actually built for protection within the whole system of the defenses of washington. so it was actually a system of fortifications and if you attacked one, like if you attacked here, you would catch fire from the forts on both sides of that fort. so they were mutually supporting and it was -- would have been very hard to actually take one fort because of all the fire that you would receive coming from the various fort. it's not important necessarily

about how many forts there were. it's the system and the mutual defense that was there that would really stop an enemy from getting into the city. just as fort stevens when they attacked there the various forts nearby. if you look at some of the pictures they have here, you'll see an interior of fort stevens and then below it is a photo of fort slimmer which is my favorite photograph of the civil war defenses of washington. it shows you what a fort looked on the outside. the vej dangerous has been removed. this is the port with the troops coming out. you can see over into the fort where the guns and mounted. that's really one of my favorite photographs. so this is very helpful for a

start. fort ward is a good place to actually start of our tour of the civil war defenses washington. before we go out and look at fort ward i want to point out this is an 1864 plan of the fort. the part that's been restored is the northwest bastion which is right here. you will see that. the rest of the fort is not as distinct when you walk through it. the northwest bastion is. this is a model of the fort as it might have looked. notice around it is the outside of the ditch. and then the fort itself and this is the northwest bastion here. this is the gate or sally port to fort ward. it was on the rear wall of the fort. it's been redone a number of

times. the army down at fort bell var especially when the engineers were there helped redo this gate a number of times. but this is your entrance to fort ward. i want to point out there were buildings here they are based on plans and photographs of buildings that were actually in the defenses of washington. but there were other gates like this at some of the other forts, too. they may not have be as nice. some of them -- 1865 probably wouldn't have been on the original gate. above it is the engineer castle. that's the logo of army engineers. as i told you the engineers helped rebuild this gate a number of times. they put the engineer castle a

number of times. they oversaw the construction of the original defenses of washington. this is one of the best preserved of the various forts that were in the defenses of washington. these parts of it are fairly well taken care of. once we get to the northwest bastion you will see what the fort would have looked like at the time of the civil war. but these are all part of the fort that we're actually in was a large one. so you can see a large area. there is also signage that we will see as we walk through explaining what each resource we run into was. such as a sign here which is pointing out that there was a bombproof right here which collapsed in. a boom proof basically was for men to go in when the fort was

being shelled and it would protect them. depending it would at least be made out of earth sometimes. they that had a basement from something they used or bricks or whatever they used in it. i had dirt over top with grass growing on it. if you got inside the bombproof you were pretty well safe. that's what's underneath here. we are coming to the northwest bastion and first of all notice the revetment, the wood that is there to strengthen the fort besides the earth you have the wood that helps keep it in place. you can see the guns. and they are a variety of guns that you will see.

and this is what happened at a lot of forts. sst whatever guns you can get a hold of. you have field artillery to little guns. the fort itself was supposed to cover the leaseburg and alexandria pike. but we are on a high point. so the guns can fire for a long distance and they can cover those areas. the original fort held 36 guns. they started building it very early and kept working on it and changing it to the place where it was eventually the fifth

largest. you had basically during the war green guns and black guns. the bronze and the iron. usually the bronze was smooth ore and the black guns were rifle guns. the rifle guns of course had a better range and actually fired better. but a gun like this was a good anti-personnel weapon. there were various types of ammunition you could use in this plus at times you could put chains and everything else in here and fire it at an enemy. of course, the chain or whatever could mow down a number of men. so this became a -- this type of gun became a good anti-personnel weapon. with this platform you could get up and take a look at the fort

without walking on the walls. as we get up here you can see the ditch and the embracers as they come out of the fort which is gun would have fired out of. also on the inside of the ditch that's called the scarf. on the outside that's called the counterscarf. notice at the top they have those bushes running along. that's to keep people from walking in the moat. but the bushes are sort of like pointed sticks and stakes that they would have outside of a lot of forts. these platforms that they built you can walk right down no the moat and get a view alon it. but you're not actually walking on it and helping to destroy it.

so if you attacked ap you came across open ground these trees would have been cut down. that would have been all open ground. you can see it. they can start hitting you with artillery and rifle fire way back. you would have to come up and hit it and then come down and you would have had infintry on the other side as well as artillery firing out at you. so it was not an easy task in trying to take one of the forts in the defenses of washington, plus you're cashing fire from the other forts on both sides of this one. a lot of these forts and the defenses of washington when i first came to this area in the late '60s there were a lot of them still here. but in years that have passed a

lot of them became housing developments or whatever. interest over the years has actually increased. but it was a problem in this area because these were union forts and most of these people in virginia had southern sympathies. they couldn't see any good reason for saving a northern fort. we're now at fort foote on the potomac river in maryland. we've come from fort ward across the potomac river to fort foote. and on this map, you'll see it would be anchoring the defenses on the potomac river down here. across the river in alexandria was battery rogers and the two of those then covered the potomac river in case ships or

raiders of some type would have come up. this fort was built, constructed between 1863 and 1865. unlike most of the other forts it was not abandoned at the end of the civil war. they continued to maintain this fort and man it until 1878 because it was on the river. the only other fort on the river, of course, you had battery rogers across the river. on towards the chesapeake bay was fort washington, which is basically located about across from mount vernon, george washington's home. at the beginning of the home it was manned by marines. and was manned in one sort or another during the war but was not actually part of the civil war defenses of washington, the circle of forts. but if there would have been ships trying to come up, it would have been had an effect

also. if you look at the map here or actually plan, it will give you an idea of the way the fort was located on the river. you have the fort itself and then some of the buildings that were associated with it behind. but it's main focus was the river itself even though it anchored the other civil war defenses of washington. but this is the way that it would have looked to someone that would have come here during the civil war. this is a national park. at times it's been quite overgrown. right now you can see if you look around it still needs some

manicuring. it is better than i've seen it in the past. but you saw at fort ward how well taken care of it it is. it's a city park, actually. and the city does a very good job of taking care of fort ward. other forts depending on who maintains them and how good a job they do, you can see a lot some place it's completely overgrown and you really don't have a good idea of what you're actually seeing. we're coming down to the water to the potomac river and if you look across the way you'll see alexandria in virginia where i mentioned that at jones point was battery rogers. jones point would have been up in this direction on the other side of the bridge, actually. where jones point with battery rogers was.

then the forts went off from there. it anchored the defenses on the virginia side and the forts went off through alexandria and on over towards arlington and then back to the potomac river and across. they actually had a chain that they could put across here, across the potomac to keep ships from coming up the river. as far as i know it was never actually laid out, they do have more that they could use a chain across the river. this is a map. there's fort foote right on the receiver. jones point right over here. and then back over towards fort ward. and then we are going to go to fort stevens which is right here. so it will give you an idea. you see these black marks point

out where the different forts were. so to give you an idea on the map and then the city more or less imposed on the map itself. we're coming up on one of the 15 inch rodman guns you can see how large it is. there were guns like this that had actually a 360 degrees shooting area because you can move it all the way around this ring. now these guns were left here when they left the fort. and when i saw them they were off their carriages sitting on the ground. what had happened was during world war ii when they were scrapping metal for the war they came out here and started dismantling the guns. they took them both off the carriages. they cut up one of the carolinas and then a national park service ranger showed up and said wait a minute, what are you doing?

and they said, no, these are protected. this is a national park. we don't want these guns cut up. so they left, but they just left them sitting here on the ground. and for many years that's the way they were. finally a congressman from pittsburgh where these guns were actually made said well if the parks service is not going to remount them, i want them back in pittsburgh. so at that point, the national park service decided to remount them. and so they built the new rings and the new carriages for the guns and they had them remounted as they would have looked. it was quite a job, but it gives you an idea of the way these guns would have looked at the time of the civil war and after. 15 inch rodman guns. the problem with world war i and

world war ii that so many guns were melted down there are few guns left, big guns specially from the civil war period. there are some. as a result it's very valuable to have these two here in fort foote. >> all the guns have markings on them with the serial number at one place or another. this says that it was made in 1863. this is the initials of rodman. thomas rodman. he was also an inspector. so he may have inspected it. it depends on the fort itself as so what guns might actually be in them. this one had two 15 inch rodman guns. they had two 400 pounder rifle parrots which would have been large. six 30-pounder parrots. i mentioned a lot of places there were some vacant

platforms. there were 11 vacant platforms. it depends on the size of the fort and what you're trying to do as to how many guns are actually in them. and how many guns are available. john g. barnard the man who oversaw the fortifications and earned most of the war as they redid and reconstructed some of these forts he decided that new guns would go in and help cover this which it wasn't doing before. your plans for the fortifications. the system of fortifications did change over the four years of the war. >> copping back, i told you we would stop and i would show you some of the 360 degree angle guns look like. see the carriage is a little bit different. but this shows you and you notice the bottom that gun could be turned 360 degrees. so you can fire now if the gun

is mounted on the parapit basically you're only going to want a 180 degree turn. it could be fired the other way if needed. so that gives you a good idea. but you can see the abatee on the outside of the ditch to try to keep enemy from coming in. but it is clear field of fire in front. this is fort stevens which is one of the many forts in the defenses of washington. this is probably the most famous. i'll explain why in a little while. originally this was known as fort massachusetts. the people who built it immediately after the battle of first mana sas which really

scared the washington, d.c. area and they started getting serious about building defenses around the city. is fort massachusetts was built in this area by massachusetts troops. it was a perimeter of 168 yards and encompassed 200 men in the fort. after second mana sas in august of 1862 they decided to make this larger because of its location. it's on a high ground. plus it covers seventh veto which today is georgia avenue. but it was at seventh street extended which a lot of people used. so it was important to protect it. so they made it larger so it was about 375 yards perimeter. as i mentioned it was perhaps the most famous fort. that's because of the battle of fort stevens on july 11th, 12th

of 1864 when jubal early brought troops up through the valley, up around frederick, maryland, and in towards washington, d.c. on july 11th. he came very near the fort here itself. his men were pretty exhausted. they did kind of feel it out a little bit that day. but decided they would have a zmon strags in force the next day. i've explained before that these defenses were mutually supportive. so that if you attacked fort stevens you were going to catch fire from the forts on both sides. and even early and his demonstration on the 12th realized that and decided to actually leave. now the defenses had started being built in 1861.

this is 18964 with the battle of fort stevens. this is the culmination of the defens defenses following the attack in july of 1864. really they pretty much went unmaligned. but they still had some troops in thomann them, but they weren't worried about that. lee was more or less headed south and the other con dead rate troops were doing the same and other parts of the country. so in 1864 was probably the culmination of the defenses themselves. even though construction went on right to the end of the war and on some of them even afterwards. interestingly in the 1930s, the civilian conservation corp. was brought in to work on this fort after the civil war it was

abandoned. and it wasn't until around the turn around 1900 that some of the veterans of the sixth corp. which had manned the fort raised money to try to buy the land. as you will see when looking around the fort it's by no means all here at this time. they tried to restore it as best they could. the fake logs are made out of concrete. basically what we're seeing is this area over to about here and then on the -- on the front side you will see the ditches still there. but this area is cut off over on this side. it was never fully finished in the rear. it was more or less like what's called the net they did have logs in the back to try to close