President Abraham Lincoln Appoints a Washington Militia Officer to Help Defend the Nation’s Capital as Civil War Looms

Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, and he was immediately faced with the secession crisis, the looming confrontation at Fort Sumter, and the potential secession of neighboring Virginia. In order to defend the nation’s capital as the Civil War loomed and broke out, from Lincoln’s inauguration to July 1861, 33 companies of infantry and one company of cavalry were raised from the District militia. Since the District of Columbia was Federal territory, it was the job of the President to approve the commission of the officers.

Document signed, Washington, March 27, 1861, appointing Joseph B. Moore “First Lieutenant of Infantry in the Seventh Regiment Fourth Brigade of the Militia of the District of Columbia.” The document is countersigned by Simon Cameron as Secretary of War, and the Great Seal of the U.S. is still present.

It soon became apparent that the local militia could not handle the crisis, and Lincoln called for states in the North to send troops to assist. Some Pennsylvania militia and regulars from Minnesota arrived in the capital on April 18, to join approximately 600 District of Columbia militia, 200 U.S. Marines and about 600 regulars. The Sixth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment arrived the next day, after experiencing problems and violence in Baltimore. Within five days of the Seventh New York Infantry Regiment’s arrival in the Union capital, 7,500 volunteers were quartered in the city and by the end of the month of April, the number had grown to nearly 11,000.