Battle of Monocacy • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • Armies
In July of 1864 Washington was in peril. While Union forces under General Grant closed in on Richmond, Confederate General Jubal Early had been sent north with 15,000 men to try to draw off as many Union troops as he could. Now he was a day’s march from Washington, and the troops that Grant had waited to send until the last minute might not arrive in time.
To buy time Union General Lew Wallace scraped together 6,000 militia and garrison troops seasoned with a few combat veterans. They blocked the turnpike to Washington at the Monocacy River outside Frederick, Maryland.
The two forces met on July 9 in a battle that lasted until dusk. Numbers and veteran troops proved decisive for the Confederacy, and Wallace’s outnumbered men fell back to Baltimore. But the one day delay allowed reinforcements from Grant to arrive. Washington was saved.
Even without capturing Washington Early had succeeded in his mission. A full army corps had been withdrawn from the Petersburg front, and Richmond would survive another nine months. But in August in the Thomas house on the Monocacy battlefield, Grant would set down with a brash cavalry general named Philip Sheridan and plan what would eventually be the total destruction of Early’s army.
Battle of Monocacy Facts
Where was the Battle of Monocacy?
The battle was fought two to three miles south and east of the city of Frederick, Maryland, along the banks of the Monocacy River. The river played a critical role in the battle as a defensive line for Union troops.
When was the Battle of Monocacy?
The battle was fought on July 9, 1864. It was part of Confederate General Jubal Early’s Valley Campaign.
See the Timeline of the Civil War in the Shenendoah Valley in 1864
Why was the Battle of Monocacy fought?
In June of 1864 Confederate General Robert E. Lee had been forced by Union Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant into a defensive struggle around Richmond and Petersburg which he knew he could not win. Lee detached Jubal Early with the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia – about a third of Lee’s strength – in the hopes he could repeat ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s brilliant 1862 campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson had aggressively used his small army to tie down Union forces many times his strength who would have been used against Lee around Richmond.
Confederate Major General Jubal Early knew Washington’s strong defenses had been largely stripped of their garrisons to provide replacements for the Union army’s massive casualties from the spring campaign. Whether or not he actually captured Washington, he hoped his bold threat to do so would force Grant to send troops back from the siege lines around Richmond and Petersburg.
Federal Major General Lew Wallace was a former combat division commander from the Western Theater who had taken a wrong road at the Battle of Shiloh and been banished to command the Union rear area department around Baltimore. Faced with a crisis and with one eye on the salvation of Washington and Baltimore and the other on the salvage of his military reputation, he scraped together all the men he had, put himself at their head and put his little army squarely in Early’s way. The last-minute addition of the tough combat veterans from the Sixth Corps probaby averted a disaster but Wallace’s instincts and execution were good.
Who won the Battle of Monocacy?
The South won a tactical victory, using their superior numbers to outflank the Northern troops and drive them from the field. Union troops retreated towards Baltimore in a great deal of disorder, leaving the turnpike to Washington open.
How many casualties were lost in the battle?
Wallace lost about 1,300 men. Early lost between 700 and 900.
What were the results of the battle?
Early’s Confederates marched to Washington the next day but arrived too hot and exhausted to press on into the Union fortifications. By the next morning it was plain that enough veteran Northern reinforcements had arrived that Washington could not be taken, and the Confederates reluctantly headed back to Virginia.
Lew Wallace had been relieved of military command by Grant, although he was reinstated later as evidence mounted that his stand on the Monocacy had possibly saved Washington. Wallace was never in doubt. The epitath he wrote for the men of his command was very clear. “These men died to save the National Capital, and they did save it.”