Determined to Stand and Fight

by Quint, Ryan;

  Soon after, the fatigued soldiers clambered down from the cattle cars and began to brew badly needed coffee. After their voyage from Petersburg, the Federals had empty haversacks and were thankful when Brig. Gen. Erastus Tyler’s soldiers “generously shared . . . some of their own commissary supplies.” The citizens of Frederick also pitched in with “some bread, meat, and coffee,” something they continued to do as more of Ricketts’s men arrived throughout the day. A later arrival from the 106th New York noted that “the people received us with joy giving water and provisions freely.”

  One of Frederick’s most-noted inhabitants, Jacob Engelbrecht religiously kept a diary from 1818 until his death in 1878. On the afternoon of July 7, Engelbrecht climbed onto his roof to watch the skirmishing taking part on the western fringes of Frederick. (hsfc)

  Col. William W. Henry of the 10th Vermont commanded the vanguard of James Ricketts’s division. Continuing his service after the battle of Monocacy, Henry would be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at the battle of Cedar Creek in October 1864. (VThs)

  Capt. Edward J. Leib’s commission was with the 5th United States Cavalry, but along the Monocacy River he commanded the 159th Ohio Mounted Infantry, a new unit that needed the gaze of an experienced officer. In 1861, Leib had enlisted in the Washington Artillerists from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, one of the units awarded with a “First Defenders” medal because they had been among some of the first troops to reach a beleaguered Washington, D.C. (ht)

  Henry’s vanguard did not have much time to enjoy either coffee or food, though. Lieutenant George Davis, soon to be in the fight of his life, remembered “our coffee was nearly ready, when we were ordered to march to the east of the city.” Wallace, it turned out, had some tricks up his sleeve as he waited for more of Ricketts’s regiments to arrive. For the rest of the day he kept a handful of Federal regiments marching back and forth, kicking up dust and forming battle lines on hills and knolls, showing a force of strength and then double-quicking to a new location to give the impression of more soldiers. The Federal soldiers came to call one such rise “Deception Hill.”

  While Wallace put the vanguard troops to use in their deceptive marches, more arrivals came into the junction as the day went on, including men from Ricketts’s second brigade, commanded temporarily by Col. Matthew McClennan. Ricketts and his entourage of staff officers, taking up the rear of the column, would not arrive until early the next morning, as even they fell victim to the laborious train ride. One of Ricketts’s clerks remarked that they “Proceeded slowly, and after many delays, reached Monocacy Junction around 2 a.m.”

  But by the time Ricketts reached the Monocacy, the entire situation had changed.

  Throughout the day, Wallace kept an eye on the mountains to his front, watching the dust trails kicked up by thousands of Confederates marching through the passes. Even with the steady arrival of Ricketts’s men, Wallace would not be able to fight Early on the northern side of the Monocacy River. No matter the odds, though, Wallace had already made a “determination to stand and fight.” Washington, D.C., still lay undefended, and someone had to stand up to Jubal Early.

  As more of James Ricketts’s soldiers arrived by rail, they clambered off their trains at the Monocacy Junction, seen here in 1858. None of these buildings still stand. (mnb)

  As evening came on July 8, Wallace began to bring his men back from the fringes of Frederick closer to the river. He had done everything he could do on the city-side of the river, and he had raised the alarm in Washington. At 8 p.m., he sent one final telegram. “Breckinridge, with strong column moving down Washington [Georgetown] Pike toward Urbana [a small town about five miles south of Monocacy Junction], is within 6 miles of that place,” Wallace wired. “[I] will withdraw from Frederick and put myself in position to cover the road.” As Wallace prepared to fall back across the Monocacy to take up battle positions, the telegram acted like an electric shock straight into Henry Halleck. He worriedly telegraphed Lieutenant General Grant, demanding more troops be sent from Petersburg for the defenses of Washington. But that would take time, and time had run out. Lew Wallace and his force of approximately 6,500 men would square off against Early’s 15,000, and the result could determine the fate of the United States’s capital.

  A cannon marking the location of a Confederate battery at the Best farm points menacingly across the Monocacy River. (cm)

  The Battle’s First Shots

  CHAPTER SIX

  JULY 9, 1864, EARLY MORNING

  It rained heavily through the night of July 8, covering the Union retreat across the Monocacy. The Confederates, meanwhile, tried to stay dry up in the South Mountain passes. As the sun crested the horizon, though, the weather appeared to be shaping up for a perfect day. “It was a beautiful day in this beautiful country,” a Confederate soldier remembered. “The sun was bright and hot, a nice breeze was blowing which kept us from being too warm, the air was laden with the perfume of flowers, the birds were singing in bush and tree[.]”A Federal soldier also noticed the birds singing, “which we had been so unaccustomed to hear during our late journey from the Rapidan to Petersburg[.]”

  Wallace spread his forces across a front of about five miles, his battle line conforming to the contours of the Monocacy River. On his right flank, covering the Baltimore Pike and Stone Bridge, Wallace posted Erastus Tyler’s brigade of Marylanders and Ohioans. Towards the center of his line, close to John Garrett’s rebuilt iron railroad bridge and Monocacy Junction, Wallace held James Ricketts’s division in readiness for whatever came down the road. Near the railroad bridge, Wallace also kept an eye on a wooden covered bridge that carried the Georgetown Pike across the river and straight towards Washington, D.C. Above and below his main positions, Wallace posted Clendenin’s cavalry to keep watch over the numerous fords that crossed the river.

  TROOP DISPOSITIONS, MORNING, JULY 9, 1864—Lew Wallace arrayed his outnumbered forces along the Monocacy River, defending the fords and bridges that Jubal Early would need to capture in order to continue his march on Washington, D.C. The fighting soon centered on two bridges near the Georgetown Pike and Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

  To defend the Junction proper, almost three hundred men crossed the river and took up positions to act as skirmishers. About 200 of these men were led by Cpt. Charles Brown from the 1st Maryland Potomac Home Brigade. To supplement the Marylanders, 75 veterans from the 10th Vermont Infantry were detailed to help. Lieutenant George Davis, ordered to cross the river as well, remembered his orders were “to hold the iron bridge . . . at all hazards.” The Vermonters—including privates Daniel B. Freeman and his skirmishing partner, George Douse (whose face would soon be injured)—took up position beside their Maryland comrades. Command of the whole force originally belonged to Lt. Col. Charles Chandler from the 10th Vermont, but he inexplicably, without telling anyone, re-crossed the river and spent the coming battle skulking in the Federal rear. When his absence was noticed, Captain Brown took command.

  First Lt. George Davis found himself commanding the roughly 300 Union skirmishers on the far side of the Monocacy River away from the main Federal line. After Monocacy, he was wounded at both the battles of Third Winchester and Cedar Creek. Promoted to captain before the end of the war, he returned to Vermont and involved himself with numerous local Christian youth programs before his death in 1926. (mnb)

  Near Frederick, Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s Confederates began to move out. Early did not join his forces that morning, instead taking up headquarters in Frederick where he dictated a letter to the town’s leaders demanding $200,000. If the town did not pay, Early threatened, he would burn it. For the time being though, town officials refused to give in to Early’s demands—what would be the purpose of paying if Wallace were to win the battle shaping up just three miles to the south? (The ransom of Frederick is discussed in Appendix B.)

  All eyes turned anxiously to the river.

  As the two sides closed in, some soldiers looked around and put the war on hold to a
dmire the Maryland fields. One soldier wrote to his wife, “Kate, if I had a hundred acres of land near Frederick City, and paid for, I would never go back to York State again to live. Such a country is worth fighting for.” A Confederate cavalryman shared the opinion, writing, “It is all together a most magnificent and lovely country.” That serenity, though, would soon be shattered.

  The covered bridge over the Georgetown Pike needed to be defended at all costs by Federal forces if they were going to delay Jubal Early’s Confederates. Already burned once before in 1862 by Confederates, the bridge had been rebuilt only to be put to the torch again, this time by Union soldiers, during the battle of Monocacy. (mnb)

  Major General Stephen Ramseur led the way towards Wallace’s force. Behind Ramseur’s columns rolled numerous artillery batteries. Moving down the Georgetown Pike, one of Ramseur’s brigades, commanded by Brig. Gen. Robert Johnston, fanned out into skirmish formation. Johnston’s North Carolinians closed in on the Junction, but Captain Brown hesitated to give the order to fire— he thought “they were Union troops because [they were] dressed in blue clothing which they had recently captured at Martinsburg.” George Davis “stoutly protested, telling him our friends were behind us,” but still Brown gave no order. Then Johnston’s men opened a sharp rifle fire, dropping a handful of Marylanders. After that, Davis explained that Brown “turned to me in disgust and insisted upon my taking command.” Davis brought his Vermonters up, and Private Freeman later remembered, “We opened fire, and made them seek hiding places for protection, though they did not withdraw entirely.” The two lines settled in and continued skirmishing.

  Brig. Gen. Robert Johnston’s North Carolinians led the way down the Georgetown Pike towards confrontation. Johnston served with Early throughout the Shenandoah Valley and, after the war, served as a lawyer and banker. He died in 1919 and is buried in Winchester, Virginia. (mnb)

  Beyond skirmishing, Johnston’s Confederates covered Lt. Col. William Nelson’s artillery battalion as the gunners unlimbered. Among the first of Nelson’s batteries to unlimber were Cpt. John Massie’s Fluvanna Artillery and Cpt. Thomas Kirkpatrick’s Amherst Artillery. Pushing a pair of 12-pounder Napoleons up to the Best farm, not far from Monocacy Junction, the Confederates rammed shells home and then tugged on the lanyards. Fire and smoke bellowed from the cannon barrels as the thunderous shots of the battle’s first artillery rounds screeched overhead.

  Thomas Kirkpatrick commanded the Amherst (Virginia) Artillery, who fired some of the first cannon shots of the battle. After his death a friend eulogized Kirkpatrick: “He was honest and true from boyhood to the end of his three score years, fearless in the maintenance of his convictions amongst his fellow men, and equally brave on the battlefield where the bursting shell and the hissing bullet told of danger and death.” (cb)

  Across the river, some of Ricketts’s men were drawing rations when the shells landed. These Federals had clustered at Gambrill’s Mill, next to a train recently arrived to deliver food to the men who had depended on handouts from Tyler’s men. Massie’s first shot struck these soldiers, leaving the bloody wreckage of two mortally wounded soldiers from the 151st New York. A soldier in the 126th Ohio later wrote, “it seems, Early sniffed our sow belly from a far, and wolf like, made a rush for it, but soon learned it would take some fight to get it.” The Federals took up their rifles and prepared for action. In the ranks of the 151st New York, not far from where the first shell landed, Pvt. Philip Cook quickly jotted in his diary, “July 9th: Year 1864. The Battle of Monocacy is on.”

  In response to the Confederate guns, Cpt. Frederick Alexander’s men jumped to their pieces. Alexander’s battery of 3-inch rifles were scattered along the line and began to return fire. With more rebel pieces being brought into action, though, the Federal battery’s historian recounted, “for every shot fired we received two in return.”

  Adding to the din was a 24-pounder howitzer, manned by a detachment from the 8th New York Heavy Artillery and located on the eastern side of the river, lobbing shells towards the deploying Confederates. Shortly before the shooting had started, Cpt. William H. Wiegel, an officer on Tyler’s staff, had taken command of the howitzer’s crew. Lew Wallace later remembered, “Wiegel’s first shell burst above the gunners on the pike. Before . . . the white cloud left by the missile had disappeared . . . the pike was cleared.”

  Capt. Frederick Alexander commanded the Baltimore Light Artillery during the battle of Monocacy. His gunners, though badly outnumbered, kept to their pieces and safely brought all their rifles off the battlefield as the Union line collapsed around them at the end of the fight. (fw)

  Brigadier General Armistead Long, commanding Early’s artillery, soon ordered more guns up to face off across the Monocacy. Captain John Carpenter’s Allegheny Artillery joined the firing line and opened fire not far from the Best house. The three batteries in front of Monocacy Junction now outnumbered Wallace’s limited artillery, and Long still had an abundance of cannons in his reserve. With shells dropping all around, one exasperated Union soldier in the 110th Ohio wrote, “Oh if we had brought our [Army of the] Potomac battery with us then it would all have been right.” The decision to leave behind the VI Corps’s guns was coming back to haunt the Union forces.

  Daniel B. Freeman, profiled in the prologue, made this map detailing his actions at Monocacy (below). On the left of the map is “Freeman’s Outpost,” which would have been near the site seen in the modern photograph (above). (nt)(cm)

  With more of Ramseur’s division deploying in the fields across from the beleaguered Federal skirmish line, three more companies from Ricketts’s division dashed across the river to help out Lieutenant Davis and Captain Brown. These men came from the 9th New York Heavy Artillery, acting as infantrymen, and the 106th New York Infantry. Their added musketry bulked up the skirmish line, at least for the time being.

  The battle of Monocacy was about two hours old, but little had been accomplished beyond making a lot of noise and smoke. Although little maneuvering had taken place, that would soon change, and the action would go from a loud skirmish to a full-fledged battle.

  Staring through fence rails near the divide between the historic Thomas and Worthington farms, much as Federal soldiers would have done as John McCausland’s dismounted Confederate soldiers came towards them. (cm)

  McCausland’s First Attack

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  10:30 A.M.-12:30 P.M.

  While the two sides grappled in their skirmish lines, the main question for Jubal Early’s Confederates became how to get across the Monocacy River. Early’s divisions could have formed strong battle lines and stormed forward, forcing the issue, but attacking across the river in the face of veteran infantry backed by artillery, limited as it was, would still have proven costly. Early later admitted this when he wrote, “The enemy’s position was too strong, and the difficulties of crossing the Monocacy under fire too great, to attack the front without greater loss than I was willing to incur.” This was the same reason Early had balked at attacking Maryland Heights—if his objective was threatening and capturing Washington, D.C., he could not throw his forces into an attack that would shred them and make them combat ineffective for the final push against the Federal capital.

  Plenty of fords spanned the Monocacy River—the task for the Confederates was to find one relatively undefended and capable of getting troops into a position from which they could attack Wallace’s smaller force. Brigadier General Bradley Johnson, the native of Frederick whose troopers had spent the last two days clashing with Federal cavalry, was the clear choice for such a mission, but Johnson was no longer on the battlefield. On the morning of the 9th, Johnson’s brigade set out on a mission personally conceived by Robert E. Lee: attack the Federal prisoner of war camp at Point Lookout, Maryland, and liberate the prisoners there, bringing them back to rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia. It was a wild goose chase that ultimately went nowhere (see Appendix D), but it took away the man most familiar with the ground w
hen he was, arguably, most needed on the battlefield.

  GEORGETOWN PIKE—John McCausland’s brigade of dismounted Virginian cavalry attacked twice against James Ricketts’s Union soldiers. At first, Ricketts only used one of his brigades but ultimately brought both of his brigades to bear as McCausland threatened to outflank him.

  Brig. Gen. John McCausland (above) had originally commanded infantry during the war and, by the battle of Monocacy, only had about three months’ experience as a cavalry commander. McCausland and his men went on to burn Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, (below) on July 30, 1864, in retaliation, they claimed, for David Hunter’s treatment of the Shenandoah Valley. (loc)(loc)

  Jubal Early later claimed that he, personally, found a suitable ford to cross, but that’s unlikely. Early remained in Frederick as his staff officers haggled with the town leaders over the ultimatum for $200,000, and it is not totally clear when he actually made it to the battlefield. One of his biographers guessed, “Only by 2:00 p.m. would [Early] personally view the ground,” leaving battlefield dispositions until then to his second-in-command, John C. Breckinridge.

  With Bradley Johnson’s men unavailable to scout, the mission fell to the Virginians in Brig. Gen. “Tiger” John McCausland’s cavalry brigade. Ranging to the south, about a mile and a half below the railroad junction, McCausland achieved his objective of finding a ford sometime around 10:30 a.m., according to one Federal staff officer’s guess.