Military Education at Fort McNair

Fort Leslie J. McNair, at the meeting of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, honors the Army Ground Forces commander who died in battle during World War II and is the U.S. Army’s third oldest installation after West Point and Carlisle Barracks. Dating to 1791, the site was selected by Washington City planner Pierre L’Enfant for a military installation and was first known as the Arsenal at Greenleaf’s Point, where the Army stored and distributed weapons. During the War of 1812, a contemporary newspaper reported that a dozen British redcoats were killed when they accidentally ignited gunpowder hidden down a dry well by a retreating American commander. A U.S. penitentiary was added in 1826, and in 1865 four of eight prisoners charged with conspiracy in President Lincoln’s assassination were hanged in its courtyard. After the Civil War, its importance in the capital’s defenses declined, and in 1881 the arsenal closed as the fort turned to storing Army uniforms and supplies. From 1893 until his death in 1902, yellow fever pioneer researcher Dr. Walter Reed studied infectious diseases here in a small post hospital. In 1904 the Army War College was founded here, opening an era of higher education for senior military personnel, and by 2004 the eight divisions of the National Defense University included the National War College, which opened in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, as well as the Inter-American Defense College, established at the height of the Cold War to safeguard the Western Hemisphere.

Washington, District of Columbia · United States