the Fort, where we found the President, who was sitting in the shade, his back against the parapet toward the enemy....  As the firing from the Fort ceased, our men ran to the charge and the Rebels fled.  We could see them running across the fields, seeking the woods on the brow of the opposite hills.  Below, we could see here and there some of our own men bearing away their wounded comrades.  Occasionally a bullet from some long-range rifle passed over our heads.  It was an interesting and exciting spectacle.”  Another account says:  “President Lincoln visited the lines in person, and refused to retire, although urged to do so.  He exposed himself freely at Fort Stevens, and a surgeon standing alongside of him was wounded by a ball which struck a gun and glanced.”  A gentleman named Neill, who lived in the country, about twelve miles from the city, gives a vivid conception of the imminence of the danger.  “After breakfast, on Tuesday, July 12,” says Mr. Neill, “I went as usual in a railway car to the city, and before noon my house was surrounded by General Bradley Johnson’s insurgent cavalry, who had made an attempt to capture the New York express train, and had robbed the country store near by of its contents.  The presence of the cavalry stopped all travel by railroad; and Senator Ramsey of Minnesota, who happened to be in Washington, could find no way to the North except by descending the Potomac to its mouth and then ascending Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore.  While the cavalry was in the fields around my home, the enemy’s infantry was marching toward the capital by what was called the Seventh Street road, and they set fire to the residence of Hon. Montgomery Blair, who had been Postmaster-General.  As I sat in my room at the President’s, the smoke of the burning mansion was visible; but business was transacted with as much quietness as if the foe were hundreds of miles distant.  Mr. Fox, the assistant Secretary of the Navy, had in a private note informed the President that if there should be a necessity for him to leave the city he would find a steamer in readiness at the wharf at the foot of Sixth Street.  About one o’clock in the afternoon of each day of the skirmishing, the President would enter his carriage, and drive to the forts, in the suburbs, and watch the soldiers repulse the invaders.”  For several days Washington was in great danger of capture.  Nearly all the forces had been sent forward to reinforce Grant, and the city was comparatively defenseless.  But its slender garrison, mostly raw recruits, held out gallantly under the encouragement of the President, until Grant sent a column to attack Early, who promptly withdrew, and the crisis was over.  This was the last time the enemy threatened the national capital.  From that time he had enough to do to defend Richmond.