Commemorative reenactment of The First Battle of Manassas/Bull Run, July 23rd.

Pageland Farm in Gainesville, VA.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

The day before, a secession convention in Virginia ratified a decision for the commonwealth to secede from the Union. Ellsworth and his regiment were among the first to arrive in the District to protect the capital city following the previous month’s bombardment of federal troops at Fort Sumter near Charleston, S.C. They also occupied adjacent territory across the Potomac River in Virginia, including the city of Alexandria.

Ellsworth would meet his fate that night at the hands of Marshall House innkeeper and fervent defender of slavery, James W. Jackson. Smithsonian magazine wrote that Ellsworth had approached the inn with only four soldiers and managed to take down its 8 foot by 14 foot Confederate flag, which could be seen from the White House with the aid of binoculars. When he returned to the main floor, Jackson fired his shotgun, killing Ellsworth. One of Ellsworth’s men, Cpl. Francis Brownell fired back, fatally injuring Jackson.

A reporter for the New York Tribune was on the scene and quickly dispatched news of Ellsworth's death. According to Washington History, his assassination sent Washingtonians “into a state of shock over the news.”

Ellsworth was more than just a Union officer. Smithsonian wrote that he worked as a patent agent in Rockford, Ill., and studied law in Chicago, where he also served in the National Guard. In 1860, Ellsworth became friends with Lincoln while working at his Springfield law office and accompanied the new president-elect when he moved to D.C. the following year.

Upon learning of Ellsworth’s death, Lincoln reportedly cried out, “My boy! My boy! Was it necessary this sacrifice should be made?" Equally distraught by their commander’s death, Ellsworth’s troops threatened to burn the city of Alexandria that night. Instead, Union authorities put them to work on building Fort Ellsworth, which overlooked the city, which would remain occupied by Union forces through the duration of the war.

According to the National Portrait Gallery’s current exhibition, "The Death of Ellsworth," his body was first brought to the Washington Navy Yard and later to the East Room of the White House upon Lincoln’s request. Ellsworth was buried in his hometown of Mechanicville, N.Y., where thousands came to pay their respects.

His esteem lived on among the 44th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment nicknamed Ellsworth’s Avengers. His true avenger, Brownell, later received the Medal of Honor, and "Remember Ellsworth!" became a battle cry for the Union. But both sides emerged with their own version of the war’s first martyr. In the South, Jackson was praised in an 1862 book, Life of James W. Jackson, The Alexandria Hero.

Image courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

On March 17, 1865, two Confederate sympathizers, John Wilkes Booth and John Surratt, were positioned near the intersection of what is today 7th Street NW and Georgia and Florida avenues, hoping to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, who had been expected to visit Campbell General Hospital, one of the city's three dozen Civil War military hospitals. Lincoln liked to visit military hospitals unannounced, meeting with wounded soldiers, going from ward to ward.

According to this history on the Campbell General Hospital assassination plot:

John Wilkes Booth learned that President Lincoln was supposed visit wounded soldiers at Campbell General Hospital for a performance of Still Waters Run Deep on March 17, 1865 and arranged an ambush. "With an hour's notice, according to John Surratt, the gang raced out waited until they saw a carriage approach. Riding alongside, they saw the man in the vehicle was not Lincoln. It may have been Salmon P. Chase, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who did attend the show," wrote historian Robert H. Fowler. President Lincoln had changed his schedule and greeted a group of Indiana soldiers instead. He never showed up—thus postponing his assassination for nearly a month.

On March 17, 2003, just as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, a North Carolina tobacco farmer protesting cuts to federal tobacco subsidies, crashed his tractor into Constitution Gardens and claimed he had explosives. Dwight Watson's two-day standoff near the intersection of 17th Street NW and Constitution Avenue snarled traffic in all directions, blocking major commuter routes in and out of downtown. Watson would soon be called the "Tractor Man," whose protest amounted to a major annoyance, ill-timed with the U.S. invasion, which dominated news coverage.

As Timothy Noah wrote in Slate at the time:

Tractor Man's main impediment, of course, was the war. With the most ambitious U.S. military action in decades about to commence, he couldn't have picked a worse time to try to focus the country's attention on his chosen cause, which was to protest the federal government's tobacco farming policies. If his aim was to spotlight that cause, he couldn't have chosen a less popular or meritorious one than the injustice of lowering tobacco price supports and attempting to keep cigarettes away from minors. If, on the other hand, Tractor Man just wanted to kill people, he'd have done better to stay in North Carolina and continue farming tobacco. The cops couldn't have laid a finger on him.

Watson's standoff ended peacefully and there were no explosives found on his tractor. He was tried and convicted on charges related to his threats and was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison.

Image courtesy Library of Congress

Abe Lincoln hasn't been this hot since his body went cold.

Lincoln turned 200 this month. The new president idolizes him. Heck, his memorial just hosted one of the biggest rock concerts in U.S. history.

A crowd of kids from Hearst Elementary were among those making the pilgrimage today to Lincoln’s summer cottage in Petworth, the newly restored residence on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home.

“I need a nice, Lincoln-like smile from all of you!” shouts William Rope, a third-grade teacher at Hearst and the main adult chaperone on the field trip.

Rope has lined up his class in front of a statue of Lincoln in the rear of the cottage for a photo op, but he’s having trouble getting his pupils to follow orders.

Two-thirds of the kids smile, as per instructions.

The rest do various unauthorized, third-gradey things, like make goofy faces and poke each other in the arm.

Rope finally has reached the end of his, well, you know. And the teacher decides, as Lincoln would have, that for the good of the whole, some individuals must suffer: The teacher loudly tosses one of the funny facemakers out of the group.

The punishment gets everybody else’s attention, and the frazzled teacher snaps the group-minus-one photo and lets the kids disperse.

After a few second to let Rope defrazzle, I ask him if his students realize how in vogue all things Lincoln are right now.

“No,” he says. “I don't know that they know that he's in the news now. But if you ask them what he did during the Civil War, they know that. They’ve been taught that.”

Who cares that the team is slumping? The few seconds it takes for the multi-chambered air rifle to fire a couple dozen shirts into the stratosphere are worth a trip to the Verizon Center.

Before encountering the Hoyas' toy, I don't think I'd heard the phrase "Gatling Gun" since high school history class. (I'm a product of Fairfax County schools, where civil war minutiae gets treated like breaking local news. )

But, as any military buff would be aware but I hadn't a clue, the Gatling Gun never went away as an implement of destruction.

And now, in fact, it's really in vogue.

Apparently, Barack Obama's escorts carry a Gatling Gun with them, just in case.

Here's footage of the presidential firepower in action.

Prepare to be scared. No, really.