Disguising his true intentions to all but his adjutant, Major Abner Dowling, and Lieutenant Colonel Irving Morrell, and lying to President Roosevelt, Custer launches his Barrel Roll Offensive on Remembrance Day — April 22, 1917 — and quickly breaks through the Confederate trench lines north of the Tennessee capital of Nashville. The Confederates withdraw to a line centered on Nashville, where Custer hits them again three weeks later by outflanking the city using a plan concocted by Morrell. Nashville soon falls, despite the best efforts of the newly formed C.S. colored regiments to stave off Custer's barrels, and the state capital becomes the U.S. First Army's headquarters. From Nashville, in July, Custer attacks the C.S. lines in the direction of Murfreesboro. Near Nolensville the U.S. receives a Confederate request for a local armistice. President Roosevelt assents, and peace on the North American front comes to Tennessee a week before the rest of the U.S. – C.S. Frontline. Custer is outraged at the halt, but Roosevelt explains that it would be difficult for the U.S.A. to defend the large salient into Tennessee it has captured, and at the same time, the southeastern chunk of Kentucky that still remains in Confederate hands would prove a nuisance in postwar years as Kentuckians elected to the Confederate Congress would constantly demand a new war against the U.S. to recapture lost territory in their state. Roosevelt's plan calls for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from captured Tennessee territory in exchange for all remaining parts of Kentucky. On the same day that the "Barrel Roll Offensive" began in Tennessee, the U.S. Army in northern Virginia attacks southward toward Manassas at the same time that U.S. troops enter occupied Washington, D.C. The "de jure" U.S. capital is recaptured after several days of intense street fighting, which levels the city and its famous landmarks (such as the Washington Monument and the White House). In northern Virginia, several U.S. attacks force the C.S. Army of Northern Virginia to retreat south. In battles at Round Hill, Centreville, and Bull Run, rear-guard actions led by a few battered batteries of the "First Richmond Howitzers" prevent the complete destruction of the latest incarnation of Robert E. Lee's fabled army. However, it is obvious the war is on the verge of being lost; this does not sit well with Confederate soldiers, who reckoned the war won only a few months before.