Determined to Stand and Fight

by Quint, Ryan;

  The ford lay in a curve of the river that brought a farm path across the Monocacy and up a hill to “Clifton,” the home of John T. Worthington’s family. Taking its name from the nearby home and another farmer’s, the Worthington-McKinney Ford fulfilled the Confederacy’s needs perfectly. McCausland’s troopers began splashing across the Monocacy and climbing up the hill towards Clifton.

  Wallace had not overlooked the Worthington-McKinney Ford, but his limited cavalry restricted how many men could watch the river crossing. Lieutenant George Corbit and his Company B, 8th Illinois Cavalry opened fire on McCausland’s vanguard as the Virginians came across. Ordnance Sgt. James McChesney of the 14th Virginia remembered, “Genl. McCausland told us that he wanted us to cross as soon as possible,” and the Virginians, using their numbers, quickly pushed Corbit’s troopers back.

  With their opposition out of the way, the Confederates moved across. “The Monocacy is a deep, sluggish stream with high slippery banks at the place which we crossed,” Cpl. Alexander St. Clair, 16th Virginia, recalled. “We floundered through, filling our canteens with warm, muddy water which was to supply us through the burning hours of the day.”

  Inside Clifton, the Worthington family sought cover from the battle heating up just outside—or at least they were supposed to be seeking cover. Curiosity got the better of six-year-old Glenn Worthington as McCausland’s men came up to his home, and the little boy put his face up against the cracks of boarded-up windows, peering out as the troopers formed into a battle line. In 1932, Glenn, then a respected judge in Frederick, published Fighting for Time: The Battle of Monocacy, offering the battle’s first full monograph. Worthington’s book, recounting what he personally saw, remains a mainstay in Monocacy literature.

  Looking down towards the Monocacy River. At the base of the hill, Lt. George Corbit’s company of the 8th Illinois Cavalry briefly opposed McCausland’s troopers and then retreated up the hill towards the camera. (rq)

  His family’s ford proved especially useful for Confederate troops, Worthington wrote, because the troops, “were hidden from the view of the enemy by the thick foliage of the trees and bushes growing along the banks of the river.” As soon as McCausland’s troopers crested near Clifton, however, they were plainly discernible to the Federals, including Lew Wallace. He quickly scribbled a message to James Ricketts. “A line of skirmishers is advancing from the south beyond the cornfield at your left,” he recounted. “I suggest you change front in that direction, and advance to the cornfield fence, concealing your men behind it.”

  Glenn Worthington watched the battle of Monocacy from his family’s basement. Six years old at the time, the memories of the battle stayed with Worthington for the rest of his life, and he was one of the strongest advocates for land being set aside as a permanent park to commemorate the battle. He was a successful judge in Frederick and is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery. (mnb)

  Ricketts heeded the message and soon had the bulk of his first brigade moving to counter the threat. His men ran to the fence line separating Worthington’s property from that of C. K. Thomas, and ducked behind, planning to hide until the last moment. A cornfield, “about waist high,” Glenn Worthington remembered, helped in the Federal concealment.

  At Clifton, McCausland’s men dismounted and readied to go forward. Traditionally when cavalry dismounted, every fourth man held the reins of his three other comrades, but John McCausland had other plans. Alexander St. Clair, with a fresh canteen of water, wrote, “when we reached the ‘brick house’ [Clifton] every man was ordered to dismount, tie his horse to the fence or turn him loose. No one could be spared to hold horses. We fully realized that this meant serious work, as this command had never before been given us.”

  In their battle line, McCausland’s men set off down the hill and towards the Federal rear. With the Federals hiding behind the fence and corn, possibly the only Union soldier the Confederates could see was Ricketts himself, who remained “the only man on horseback. . . . His staff officers having dismounted,” Glenn Worthington later wrote. The Confederates did not sense any opposition and moved “with banners and guidons waving and a general feeling of an easy victory prevailing.” A soldier in the 87th Pennsylvania added that the Confederates “expected to meet raw troops,” adding to their oblivious march forward. Ricketts waited for the perfect time to unleash his Federals.

  That moment came when McCausland’s men were “within 125 yards” of the Federal line. “Then, at a word of command, the whole Federal line of infantry rose to its feet and resting their guns on the upper rails of the fence, took aim and fired a volley, a murderous volley into the ranks of the approaching foe,” Worthington remembered. “Watched from a distance the whole rebel line disappeared as if swallowed up in the earth. Save and except several riderless horses galloping about . . . the attacking force had vanished.”

  Col. William Truex, commanding a brigade in Ricketts’s division, repulsed McCausland’s first attack. Truex had attended West Point for two years, but left before graduating. He served in the Mexican War and joined the Union army as a major in the 5th New Jersey Infantry. Truex was new to brigade command at Monocacy—the result of heavy casualties in the Overland Campaign requiring replacement officers. (mcl)

  Corporal St. Clair wrote, “we were met by a withering fire from thousands of muskets. . . . We were ordered to lie down, as under this concentrated fire no living being could have stood.”

  As the Confederates began to return fire, thick, acrid clouds of dirty-white smoke formed in front of each line. Trying to get a better view of the Union battle line, Lt. Col. William C. Tavenner “called out for a volunteer to climb on his shoulders and from that elevation look down on the enemy’s line,” Nathan Harris, a trooper in the 16th Virginia, recalled. One of the lieutenants from the 16th offered, and Tavenner “bent down and the Lieutenant climbed on his shoulders, and then [Tavenner] slowly rose. He had scarcely straightened himself out,” Harris wrote, “when there came a sharp sound from the direction of the enemy, and a volley was poured into the bodies of the two men. They fell to the ground and instantly expired, making no report.”

  McCausland’s battered men began to retreat towards Clifton. “The officers tried in vain to rally the men,” Glenn Worthington remembered. “They swore at them and threatened them with sword and pistol, but for a while they would give no heed.” Tucked away inside the brick building, nonetheless, “The curses of the officers in their efforts to stop the men and their threats to kill the fugitives unless they turned could be plainly heard by the occupants of the cellar.” Watching and listening, Glenn’s mother, Mary, “was moved to exclaim: ‘Poor creatures, it means death to them either way.’”

  * * *

  Around the same time that McCausland’s advance was shattered, Stephen Ramseur attacked the Junction again. Ramseur ordered some of Robert Johnston’s North Carolinians to once more go forward to try to push the Federals away from the Junction. Charging forward, the Tar Heels were soon hit “by a hot enfilading fire from the line of battle in the railroad cut,” as one North Carolinian remembered. To escape the infantry and artillery fire, “a company of soldiers” from the 23rd North Carolina “passed under [a] culvert and opened fire on the Enemy in the R.R. cut from the left flank,” one of Carolinians wrote. This flanking fire caused some of the Federal skirmishers to reel back, and one of the Confederate shots found George Douse (the unfortunate Vermonter) in the face.

  One of McCausland’s troopers at Monocacy was Nathaniel E. Harris. Eighteen years old at the battle, Harris survived the war and went on to serve as governor of Georgia from 1915-1917. (nh)

  Other Confederates sought a sharpshooting position in a barn on the Best farm. Climbing into the loft, the Confederates began to fire down into the Federal position and across the river. It was not long, though, until, according to the battery historian from the Baltimore Light Artillery, that “one of our officers noticed small puffs of smoke from under the shingles of a barn . . . we directed our
attention to them, the second shot burst inside the barn, and so did the third, and the fourth; the barn was soon on fire.” Scrambling for cover, the Confederates left the conflagration while, in Lt. George Davis’s simple words, he “repelled the attack” on the Junction.

  With the dull pop of musketry and occasional cannonading, the calm of earlier returned to the Junction.

  * * *

  While James Ricketts bloodied McCausland’s cavalry brigade and Stephen Ramseur tried for the railroad junction, Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes’s division also engaged on the north end of the battlefield, near the Stone Bridge and Baltimore Pike.

  Mary Worthington, Glenn’s mother, was horrified watching the devastation of McCausland’s brigade as they retreated from the Federals’ fire. (mnb)

  Rodes’s men marched through Frederick around 11:00 a.m. before taking up their route on the macadamized Baltimore Pike. One Confederate officer, Cpt. Robert Park, harshly wrote that he “neither saw nor heard anything of the mythical ‘Barbara Freitchie’ [sic], concerning whom the abolitionist poet, Whittier, wrote in such an untruthful and silly strain.” Barbara Fritchie, a resident of Frederick, had gained notoriety during the Antietam campaign in 1862 when, as Stonewall Jackson’s troops marched through the town, she supposedly waved the Stars and Stripes in the Confederate faces. John Whittier, the “abolitionist poet,” had written a popular poem describing the incident, which likely never happened. Regardless of whether Fritchie waved the flag, Captain Park would not have seen her in the summer of 1864—she had died in the winter of 1862, at the age of 96.

  STONE BRIDGE FIGHTING—While fighting surged back and forth around the Georgetown Pike, Robert Rodes began to push against Erastus Tyler. The heaviest fighting for the bridge came around noon when Rodes attempted to capture the axis over the Monocacy River. After Tyler blunted the initial attack, the fighting near the stone bridge fell into long-range skirmishing until about 6:00 p.m., when the Union force began to fall back towards Baltimore. Tyler acted as the rearguard, fending off the last assaults.

  Rodes’s orders did not call for a full-sized attack across the Monocacy. Rather, his division was to cover the left flank of Early’s force and skirmish with whatever enemy it found to the front. With Early himself still in Frederick, Rodes was largely on his own.

  Across the line, Brig. Gen. Erastus Tyler prepared his men. Tyler was responsible for protection of the Stone Bridge as well as a couple of fords across the river, including Hughes’s Ford, to his north, and Crum’s Ford, located almost at the middle point between the Stone Bridge and Monocacy Junction.

  Barbara Fritchie, a native of Frederick, became a national icon with the publication of John Whittier’s poem detailing her supposedly flying a United States flag in front of Stonewall Jackson’s troops as they marched through town in 1862. The incident never occurred, though. Fritchie’s neighbor, Jacob Engelbrecht, wrote, “I do not believe one word of it. I live directly opposite, and for three days I was nearly continually looking at the Rebel army passing the door. . . and should anything like that have occurred I am certain someone of our family would have noticed it. The first I heard of it was the Whittier poetry.” Fritchie, who died in 1862 before the publication of the poem, is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery. (loc) (cm)

  Using his tiny complement of horsemen, the 159th Ohio Mounted Infantry, Tyler screened Hughes’s Ford. To protect Crum’s Ford, Tyler looked to the remaining companies of the 1st Maryland Potomac Home Brigade—the others being under the command of Charles Brown at the Monocacy Junction—and the 3rd Maryland Potomac Home Brigade. To connect to the Junction from his line, Tyler positioned the 11th Maryland Infantry, the newest unit to have joined the service. That left Tyler with the two units of Ohio National Guard to face off against whatever Rodes sent his way.

  Only three companies of the 144th Ohio had made it to the Monocacy, the others remaining behind to defend relay houses and other points along the B&O. With both the 144th and the 149th truncated, Tyler combined them under the command of Col. Allison Brown (not to be confused with Cpt. Charles Brown) and sent them across the bridge. The Ohioans took up positions in the fields, along the ridgeline in front of the bridge, and prepared to fight.

  When Rodes came forward, he did not send his entire division towards the Ohioans’ battle line. Rather, his division’s sharpshooter battalions dashed ahead and began to take aim. The concept of sharpshooter battalions had been introduced to the Army of Northern Virginia the spring before. Officers would pick the best shots among their units, and during battle, the chosen men would form into individual battalions. When the action was over, the men would return to their parent regiments until the next fight. While the rest of Rodes’s division watched and waited, his sharpshooters went forward to engage Brown’s Ohioans.

  The stone bridge brought the Baltimore Pike—or National Road as it is sometimes referred to—over the Monocacy River. As Wallace’s only escape route back to Baltimore, holding the bridge was vital for the Union forces. The bridge no longer stands, but the “jug,” seen on the eastern side of the bridge, still exists, and is included in the driving tour. From this photograph’s perspective, Ohioans under Brig. Gen. Erastus Tyler were positioned on the far side of the river, skirmishing with Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes’s men. (loc)

  “Then came the tug of war,” one soldier in the 149th Ohio wrote later. Allison Brown guessed that the enemy’s sharpshooters hit his line around “11.30 a.m.,” the same time as the escalation of the fighting around the Junction and Worthington Farm.

  The sharpshooters soon held the upper hand. They spread out in a loose formation, making themselves harder to hit, while others went into a log house and began poking their rifles through “holes pierced in the chinking between the logs,” one of Tyler’s staff officers wrote. “So accurate was their fire that it was dangerous for our men to even show their heads above the hilltop.”

  Col. Philip Cook commanded one of Rodes’s brigades of infantry. Rodes’s division deployed its sharpshooters and did not really push the Federals until later in the day, leaving most of the Confederates there standing in reserve. (loc)

  Other Confederates began to make their way around Colonel Brown’s left flank, edging closer to the Stone Bridge. When the Confederates began to fire down Brown’s line, he knew he had to do something. Turning to the 149th Ohio, he ordered a company to charge the rebel sharpshooters to push them back.

  Col. Allison Brown oversaw both the 144th and 149th Ohio National Guard at Monocacy. He had enlisted as a private at the beginning of the war and steadily climbed through the ranks until he was commissioned as the colonel for the 149th Ohio in the spring of 1879. He served as a state senator in Ohio from 1875 until his death in 1879. His men affectionately called him “Colonel Ally.” (gp)

  As the Ohioans set out, though, the Confederate fire hit them hard. “During this charge,” Brown reported, “my loss was quite severe, owing to the fact that the enemy was posted behind the fence, while my men were compelled to charge across an open field, up the hill in fair view, and within short range of his guns.”

  As the Ohioans from the 149th reeled back, Brown sent more men in, this time from the 144th Ohio. Though they had only been in uniform for about three months, the companies from the 144th “never flinched but went at it like old veterans,” an onlooker recalled. This time the Ohioans succeeded, and Rodes’s sharpshooters fell back to where they could continue their long-range sniping with impunity. Colonel Brown solidified his line and waited for the next attack.

  On both ends of the battlefield, the Confederate advances had been blunted. None of the attacks had been all that large, and a soldier in the 87th Pennsylvania remembered, “After the enemy had been driven back from the railroad, about noon, there came that ominous lull often spoken of before a storm.”

  That storm would soon come crashing down.

  The modern bridge over Maryland Route 355 is located near where the covered bridge was before Federal soldiers put it to the torch. (
cm)

  McCausland’s Second Attack

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  2:00-3:30 P.M.

  Things started to go poorly for Lew Wallace as pressure mounted along his line.

  First he lost the use of the 24-pounder howitzer that had been lobbing shells at Ramseur’s skirmishers since the battle started. The gunners firing the howitzer were inexperienced and nervous, and as Confederates brought up more pieces of artillery, the situation became even more desperate. At some point, a jittery gunner improperly loaded the howitzer by ramming a shell home before the powder bag that was necessary to fire the artillery. In charge of the howitzer, Cpt. William Wiegel tried to unload the shell but was unable to do so. Getting word of the disabled howitzer, Wallace rode over to the vexed gun crew.

  “Up-end the gun,” Wallace ordered Wiegel, who replied, “I’ve tried that; it won’t do.”

  Unable to get the shell out of the howitzer, the gun spent the rest of the battle lying dormant and useless to the Federals. “The howitzer alone was worth all [Frederick] Alexander’s six rifles,” Wallace remembered. The howitzer was “lost to us . . . when it could have done us infinite good.”

  Sometime between noon and 2:00 p.m., Wallace’s next crisis reared its head. With Ramseur bringing more of his troops up to face off against the Federal line at the junction and John McCausland’s cavalry brigade near the Worthington house, Wallace became increasingly worried about the wooden covered bridge. If the Confederates seized the bridge intact, it would serve as a dagger straight into the Federal lines, and Wallace did not have enough men to shuffle around to each point of contact. “My objective was to release the guard taking care of it [the bridge], and that they might join their regiments, then in ever such need of every available man,” Wallace wrote later. Only one option remained: burn the bridge.