16. He was the second president to observe American troops in battle while in office
In 1814 James Madison became the first American president to view American troops on the field of battle while serving in office, though the battle was a short one. Madison watched an army made up of mostly militia, supported by American sailors and a few regulars, as it was routed by British troops at the Battle of Bladensburg. The defeat of the Americans was so resounding and the flight of the troops so brisk that the battle came to be known as the Bladensburg races. So when Lincoln went to Fort Stevens to observe an attack by Confederate troops under Confederate general Jubal Early it was not without precedent for a president to be on a battlefield. It was Lincoln’s first opportunity to view a battle since his militia days during the Black Hawk War, when he served as a Captain of the militia.
Lincoln watched the assault from a parapet atop Fort Stevens, conspicuous as the tall, lean figure wearing a tall, stovepipe hat. The president came under fire, a Union officer, a surgeon with whom the president had been conversing was wounded, and the president was immediately ordered to take cover. Some accounts state that he was pushed back from the exposed position on the parapet. The attack on Fort Stevens remains the only time the President of the United States has been under fire on a battlefield while serving in office. Lincoln returned to the White House later that afternoon, after stopping at the Soldier’s Home to visit wounded. The story that while there he discovered a bullet hole in his hat is most certainly apocryphal.