Photo of the Day

An anxious time.

November 1862.

The shocking losses on both sides in the September battle in the farm fields of Antietam had previewed what was to come.

Confederate dead along the Hagerstown Pike in Maryland, September 1862.

But, at the moment, the battle lines were little changed.

Lincoln was frustrated.

Lincoln at the Antietam battlefield, where he met with Gen. McClellan, October 3, 1862.

On November 5, he had relieved McClellan of his command of the Army of the Potomac after McClellan had refused to press a hard-won advantage against Lee’s retreating forces.

But McClellan’s replacement, General Ambrose Burnside, will fare little better in the days ahead.

And Lincoln’s frustration will grow.

Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Burnside would be defeated and forced to retreat, shown here in 1863.

New York diarist George Templeton Strong captures the mood in the North in a November 1862 diary entry:

“The war languishes.

“We are slowly invading Virginia, but there is nothing decisive or vigorous done there or elsewhere.

“I’ve a dim foreboding of a coming time when we shall think of the war not as ‘languishing’ and too slow to satisfy our appetite for excitement,

“but as a terrible, crushing, personal calamity to every one of us.”

Winslow Homer, The Army of the Potomac--A Sharpshooter on Picket Duty, from Harper's Weekly, November 15, 1862.

But on Saturday, November 15, Lincoln took a break from his troubles and went to the Washington Navy Yard on the Anacostia River in southeast Washington.

The Washington Navy Yard, shown in 1866, is the US Navy’s oldest shore establishment. It occupies land set aside by George Washington for use by the federal government.

The commander of the Navy Yard, Rear Admiral John Dahlgren, had designed a new rocket.

And he had invited his friend, the President, to watch a test launch.

Dahlgren would be known as ‘the father of America naval ordnance.’

Dahlgren had developed several new weapons designs.

He’d had them built at a Navy Yard foundry.

And he had even written some books on the topic.

IX-inch Dahlgren Gun.

And his friend Lincoln was a fellow tinkerer who enjoyed visiting Dahlgren’s workshop.

So, when the invitation came to see a new rocket fly into the air over the Anacostia River, Lincoln readily accepted.

And he brought two cabinet secretaries along.

Lincoln’s patent model of his riverboat navigation device.

When the men arrived at the Navy Yard, they were taken down to the banks of the river where the new rocket had been positioned in its launcher.

Then, a Navy officer lit the rocket’s fuse.

Washington Navy Yard dock, 1867.

But the rocket failed to budge from its launcher and simply exploded in place, creating a billowing cloud of smoke and flying shrapnel.

Luckily, neither Lincoln nor anyone else got hurt, but it was a bit of a setback.

Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, standing beside a 50-pounder Dahlgren rifle, on board the USS Pawnee in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, circa 1863-1865.

But Dahlgren would not be deterred.

Two days later, with a self-confidence which only an inventor can muster, he tried another test launch.

This time, the rocket lifted out of its launcher and commenced its flight.

Washington Navy Yard grounds during the Civil War.

But rather than soaring high over the river, the rocket veered off course and landed on the roof of the Navy Yard’s blacksmith shop.

Mercifully, the rocket failed to explode.

Sanity took the reins.

The dual failure would be the end of Dahlgren’s rocket experiments and rocketry would play virtually no role in the Civil War.

Lincoln in 1862.

But happily, Dahlgren’s friendship with Lincoln, who himself was well versed in setbacks, continued.

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda