Fort Ellsworth was a timber and earthwork fortification constructed west of Alexandria, Virginia, as part of the defenses of Washington, D.C. during the American Civil War.

[1] Throughout the remainder of the war, Alexandria would lean strongly towards the Confederate government, necessitating continued occupation by a Union garrison.

In the days that followed the Union defeat at Bull Run, panicked efforts were made to defend Washington from what was perceived as an imminent Confederate attack.

On July 26, 1861, five days after the battle, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan was named commander of the military district of Washington and the subsequently renamed Army of the Potomac.

There was nothing to prevent the enemy shelling the city from heights within easy range, which could be occupied by a hostile column almost without resistance.

When we came in here...it was occupied by four hundred 'man -of-war's men:' in fact, a complete frigate's crew – and they have been spending the past two months in putting the fort in order, just as sailors do, sodding and whitewashing everything, and planting evergreens, until the inside of the works is the very picture of neatness.

The fortifications, so numerous in all this region, and now so unsightly with their bare, precipitous sides will remain as historic monuments, grass-grown and picturesque memorials of an epoch of terror and suffering: they will serve to make our country dearer and more interesting to us, and afford fit soil for poetry to root itself in: for this is a plant which thrives best in spots where blood has been spilt long ago, and grows in abundant clusters in old ditches, such as the moat around Fort Ellsworth will be a century hence.