Crosshairs on the Capital: Jubal Early's Raid on Washington, D.C., July 1864 - Reasons, Reactions, and Results

A new perspective on Jubal Early's raid on Washington, D.C. in 1864.

In an era of battlefield one-upmanship, the raid on the Nation’s Capital in July 1864 was prompted by an earlier failed Union attempt to destroy Richmond and free the Union prisoners held there. Jubal Early’s mission was in part to let the North have a taste of its own medicine by attacking Washington and freeing the Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout in southern Maryland. He was also to fill the South’s larder from unm...