Washington Post reporter set out to show his son the D.C. area’s 68 Civil War forts.

[David Lockmiller]

A Washington Post reporter set out to show his son the D.C. area’s 68 Civil War forts.

The son asked his father a technical Civil War question.

If you drag a 4-year-old to a bunch of dirt piles and are trying to convince him they’re forts, you need cannons. They are the coin of the realm. Fort Foote’s cannons are the original Rodman smoothbores, and they are massive. They sit on a high bluff above the Potomac — with great views of Alexandria on the opposite shore — commanding the river. I envisioned Confederate ships steaming upriver, and these guns pounding them. I tried to explain the idea. “But Daddy,” he asked, “would they be shooting bullets or lasers?”