The Battle of Monocacy: The Union Loss That Saved Washington, D.C.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including yours. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They’re some of our favorites. Previously on our show, Mark Leipson told the story of the Battle of Baltimore and the writing of our National Anthem. Today, Mark’s back to tell the story of the Battle of Monocacy, the Civil War battle that was a Union loss and saved Washington, D.C. The July 9th, 1864, Battle of Monocacy is one of the most important, little-known battles of the Civil War, mainly because it’s known as the Battle that saved Washington, D.C., because after which the Confederates attacked nation’s capital for the first and only time during the Civil War. It took place four miles south of Frederick, Maryland, about forty-five miles west of Washington, D.C. This was a time when Lee was surrounded at Richmond and Petersburg by Grant. Following the bloody of six weeks of the Civil War, Grant’s Wilderness Campaign, aka the Overland Campaign, the last three huge battles of the Civil War. The Battles of Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, and Cold Harbor. These were mammoth battles that hundreds of thousands of troops took part in. Wilderness, May 5th through the 7th, is over 101,000 Union troops alone, 61,000 Confederates, 25,400 casualties—killed, wounded, and taken prisoner. Followed by Spotsylvania Courthouse, coming east towards Fredericksburg, again, 1,000 Union troops, over 50,000 Confederate troops, 30,000 combined casualties. I mean, these were slaughters, as was a Battle of Cold Harbor right near Richmond that dragged on for two weeks, May 31st to June 12th, about 17,000 casualties. And the other thing to keep in mind about this whole thing is hovering over it is the 1864 presidential election, the only presidential election ever held in a country during a fighting Civil War, a democratic national election held during the fighting Civil War. And of course, Lincoln was running for reelection, and he was going against the Democrat General McClellan, the disgraced Union general. It was not a great time for Lincoln. They didn’t have Gallup polls then, but everybody knew it was going to be a really uphill struggle to get that victory in November. In fact, he almost didn’t get the Republican nomination. He had to choose a Democrat. That would be Andrew Johnson, Senator of Tennessee, a Southern Democrat at that, to be his running mate. Because his Republican Party was divided. You know, War Republicans and Peace Republicans were at odds. Lincoln was trying to navigate that. The Democrats, they were slightly divided, but they were united in their opposition to Lincoln. In the midst of all this, Robert E. Lee comes up with his bold, four-part plan to thwart Grant’s plan to end the war. Part one: to drive Union forces from out of the Shenandoah Valley. The Union had Shenandoah Valley, the Confederate’s bread basket. They were desperately needing food. They were desperately needing supplies to get through. Second: free the Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout P.O.W. Camp, which was on the southern point, still there today, on the Sou’s a Museum on the southern tip of Southern Maryland, not far from Washington, D.C. ‘As the crow flies,’ probably 12,000 Confederate prisoners held there. If they had been freed, that would have been the equivalent of a corps of troops for Robert E. Lee. Lee desperately needed a third: to threaten Washington, D.C., if possible. And fourth and most important in Lee’s mind, was to force Grant to move those troops away from Richmond in Petersburg so that Lee could have some breathing room. So, who did Robert E. Lee choose on this dangerous and important mission is Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early, who was one of the most colorful and controversial characters in the Civil War. He was a Virginian from Rocky Mount, Virginia. He went to West Point. He wasn’t a great student, graduated at the bottom of his class. He just about served briefly in the Seminole War, although nothing was going on when he got down to Florida. He served in the Mexican War. Same thing: fighting was over by the time he got out there. He went back to Virginia to practice law. He was a member of the Virginia Secession Convention, actually voted against secession at first, but when the tide turned, he voted for secession. And he was one of the most die-hard Confederates during the war and afterward. He was wounded at the Battle of Williamsburg in ’62. He fought in every battle in the Eastern Theater. He was an aggressive general, although he did not judge terrain well; he did not judge. He wasn’t a great tactician, you know, a love-hate relationship with the men. He was very abrasive. He didn’t get along very well with the other officers. Robert E. Lee called him ‘my bad old man,’ even though Lee was older than Early. Early had contracted arthritis, and he was hunched over, and he had a straggly beard, and he was just a kind of a mean, cantankerous, you know, misogynistic, racist guy. But he was aggressive, which is probably why Lee chose him, although he—you know, he didn’t have much choice at that point in the war with what generals were available. So, in the early morning hours of June 13th, Early marched 8,000 Confederate troops away from Richmond and Petersburg. They snuck out. The Union did not have a clue that this happened. They marched 70 miles due west to Charlottesville. They got rickety trains on June 17th, and on June 19th came the Battle of Lynchburg, which is even less well known because there wasn’t much of a battle, because when the Union generals heard that Early was there with the corps of troops, they fled. And you’re listening to Mark Leipson tell the story of the Battle of Monocacy, and it’s the battle that saved Washington, D.C. More of the story here on Our American Stories.

Here at Our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith, and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told. But we can’t do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love our stories and America like we do, please go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we’re back with Mark Leipson here on Our American Stories and the story of the Battle of Monocacy, the little-known battle that saved Washington, D.C. When we last left off, Union troops were fleeing north from Confederate General Jubal Early in June of 1864. They went west, they went over the mountain into what is now West Virginia. That was led by General David Hunter, aka Black Dave Hunter, who was not one of the top Union generals. He had just finished what was known as Hunter’s Raid up and down the Valley—the Shenandoah Valley, Staunton, Lexington, Natural Bridge, that area, Lynchburg. And he had, you know, was living off the land, which meant confiscating people’s farm animals and crops, and just up a general no good. And so he fled, and with him, one of Lee’s goals was accomplished. The Union troops had left Shenandoah Valley, not to come back. So then the Confederate troops, they started their march up north, which we call ‘going down the Valley’ because how the Shenandoah flows. So, in other words, when you go north, you’re going ‘down the Valley’ because of the way the Shenandoah flows. The last Union general in their way was General Franz Sigel, who again was not one of the great Union generals. In fact, he was probably one of the worst. He had. He was a political general; he was German. He came here with no battlefield experience. Lincoln was trying to influence German Americans and Germans to come on the Union side, and that was the reason Sigel got this command. And, you know, his low point came during the Battle of New Market earlier that spring, when his superior forces were routed by Confederate troops there in the Shenandoah Valley, aided by cadets from Virginia Military Institute, some as young as 15 years old. So Sigel fled. He went way up into Maryland to the Maryland Heights over at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Right across the river, Early and his men marched. You know, it was very hot that summer. About a third of the men did not have shoes, but they kept going. And when Early got across the Potomac River… This was the third time that the Confederates had, if you want to call it that way, invaded the North—the first time being for the Battle of Antietam in ’62. In the second time, in ’63, for Gettysburg. Everybody heard of that, but not very many people know about his third move into the north. And they camped for two days outside Antietam, which is not far from Harpers Ferry, where they rested well. So that’s when Early got the order from Rob Lee—Robert E. Lee’s son. They sent him on horse, but I didn’t want to put this order out on the telegraph. They sent him on horseback up from Richmond, and he delivered this important, crucial order to go after those imprisoned Confederates at Point Lookout, if they could. So, let’s back up just a quick minute and talk about Washington, D.C., at this point in the war. You know, you think about it, Washington’s just, you know, across the Potomac River from Virginia. It was 90 miles. It is 90 miles from Richmond, the capital of Confederacy. So, especially after the First Battle of Manassas in the summer of ’61, people were worried about a Confederate invasion of the national capital. So, soon after that, the Union Army went around went and built what was known as the Defenses of Washington. When they finished—which was this time in the Civil War—or something like 68 forts surrounding Washington, D.C. And of course, they went into Virginia because the Union took over northern Virginia soon after the war started. Now, these were defensive forts. They weren’t extensive, but they did bristle with artillery. They were out-facing, and the forts were basically all tied together by a series of berms and embankments. There’s only one fort left today that you can see, and that’s Fort Stevens, which is—if you think of Washington, D.C., as shaped like a diamond—it’s at the very tip of the diamond, nearer Silver Spring, Maryland. And it’s a national park. Now, I mean, the fort has been rebuilt, but you can see what they were like if you go there. They had cannons facing out. Of course, inside it was like a horseshoe. And the forts were designed to be manned by about 50,000 to 60,000 troops, but at this point in the war, there weren’t a lot of spare, able-bodied Union troops. Washington, D.C., was kind of like a hospital during the war. Hospital, you know, schools, government buildings were turned into hospitals. Men recovering from these vicious battles that had kept accumulating, and so we don’t know how many people were defending Washington at this time, but we think it was maybe around 10,000, if that. And not only that, but most of them were members of what was known as the Veteran Reserve Corps. Now, the Veteran Reserve Corps had recently changed its name. In 1864, it had been known as the Invalid Corps. The Invalid Corps were men who were recuperating from their wounds, but well enough to walk and man the barricades. So we had about 10,000 invalids defending Washington, D.C., at this point in the war, and we had Jubal Early on the march. So, they crossed the Potomac. Like I said, on July 5th, this was actually the first time the Union intelligence realized that Lee had just sent an entire corps of troops away from Richmond. They started moving toward Washington, D.C. Now, word is getting back to Washington now that Lee has sent the corps of troops out there, and the Union intelligence—which was not great in general during the war—was not good here either. At first, the reports said it was General Ewell, who was in the hospital at the time. It was actually Early, and they kept getting the numbers wrong. You know, 20,000 was mentioned, 25,000 was mentioned. Grant heard about it. He saw the dispatches, and he figured out what Lee was up to, and he decided he wasn’t going to send any troops. He had his plan in place and that’s what he was going to do. But one Union Army general did figure it out and did take action, and that is Lew Wallace. Another colorful character who later became famous as a novelist. You know, he wrote the second-best-selling novel of the 19th century, Ben-Hur. He wasn’t a military man, although he did form a local militia unit, but it was a Zouave unit. Those were the Zouaves were guys who dressed up in these interesting uniforms with pantaloons and vests and mostly did close-order drill. They were very popular, but they certainly didn’t have any battlefield experience. So Lew Wallace started his own regiment when the war started. He quickly rose in the ranks as he had success in an early battle in Romney, West Virginia. When the Union press was looking for heroes, and they played him up. And then he also fought very well in February ’62 at the Battles of Fort Henry, Heiman, and Donelson out there in Tennessee, and he was promoted to major general at 34, one of the youngest Union generals. His low point came at the Battle of Shiloh, April 6th-7th, 1862, when he managed to get his and lost in the woods before—the first—they missed the first day. Grant was commanding, as was General Halleck. Henry Halleck, and they both were not very happy with Wallace, and they relieved him of his command. He was out of the war for two years. He begged to get back in. He finally was. In March ’64, he was appointed commander of the Eighth Army Corps of the Middle Department. Basically, he was military governor of Baltimore, which was kind of a hotbed of a Confederate sentiment, but it wasn’t anything like what he wanted. He was itching to get back in the fight, so without orders, on his own, on July 3rd, Wallace started gathering up troops to send down to Monocacy Junction, which is four miles south of Frederick, Maryland. And he arrived on July 5th. At the end of the day, July 6th, all the troops he could muster—who were mostly hundred-days men who hadn’t had any experience. It’s in battle. One gun, one piece of artillery, and he had about 1,500 men. And you’re listening to Mark Leipson tell the story of the Battle of Monocacy. And by the way, picture in your mind Richmond being the capital—of Montgomery, also a capital in the Confederacy—and Richmond in D.C., two capitals of opposing armies, within about a two-hour drive, if you know that area of the country. So they’re right next to each other, these two capitals. And here is Lee trying to strike in our current nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. The story of the Battle of Monocacy continues here on Our American Stories.

And we’re back with the final portion of Mark Leipson’s retelling of the 1864 Battle of Monocacy. Here on Our American Stories. It’s also known as the Battle to Save Washington, D.C. We return to Mark Leipson and Union General Lew Wallace. At the end of the day, July 6th, all the troops he could muster—who were mostly hundred-days men who hadn’t had any experience in battle—one gun, one piece of artillery, and he had about 1,500 men. Meanwhile, Early had picked up more troops. He’s got about 14,000 men, and he’s bearing down on Monocacy. So, finally, Grant finally relents when he hears when all this word gets to him, and he releases the Sixth Corps from City Point outside of Richmond. They get a hunt. They wake him up early in the morning. They get on ships. They go down to James River, out into the Chesapeake, and up to Baltimore. They get on trains at the old Camden Station, and they arrived there on early after, in July 7th. Trains left at 4:00 o’clock. They arrived the next dawn, the next day, at Frederick Junction. And now Wallace has about 6,500 troops. Again, he’s over two-to-one outmanned, but he at least has 6,500. He has one gun. The Confederates have something like 24 guns. So it’s inevitable that the Confederates are going to win this, but Wallace puts up a full-day fight. One of the Confederate commanders was John Brown Gordon, who had fought in every battle in the Eastern Theater, was wounded five times at Antietam. He said that later, that Monocacy was their sharpest fight he was in. The first shots were fired at 6:00 a.m. Saturday, July 9th. Those three artillery battalions really won the day for the Southerners, and Wallace was forced to retreat at about 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon. So this little-known battle—no, it wasn’t Antietam; it wasn’t Wilderness—but we did have about 1,300 Union casualties—killed, wounded, taken prisoner—and about 800 Confederates. So some people call this a skirmish, but, you know, it was a battle. The river ran red with blood, and I know that people say about other battles, but in this case it was true because a lot of the fighting took place right on both sides of the river. The Confederates won. When Halleck and Grant found out what happened, they relieved Wallace of this command, although he was soon reinstated. Early and the troops spent the night on the battlefield on July 9th, and then the next morning they marched east toward Washington, D.C. He sent his cavalry north toward Baltimore for two reasons: one, to make people believe that he was going to Baltimore rather than Washington; and two, to cut the railroad and telegraph lines, which he did. So, Washington was incommunicado.