Determined to Stand and Fight

by Quint, Ryan;

  Two officers have not been credited until recent scholarship in their role in defeating Early. They are Union generals Franz Sigel and Max Weber. Lew Wallace managed to delay Early’s force for one day at Monocacy; Sigel and Weber stopped Early for three days. Their stand atop Maryland Heights at Harpers Ferry changed the entire scenario; rather than having the Potomac River act as a conduit straight to Washington, Early instead needed more time to go through the South Mountain passes and then battle through Frederick and across the Monocacy. The losses at Harpers Ferry may have been small, but the fighting there also finally alerted Federal officials about the seriousness of the invasion north. Of the two, Sigel certainly had his faults and, no matter what, will always bear the defeat at New Market, but his stand at Harpers Ferry alongside Weber deserves more recognition for what it accomplished.

  * * *

  Lew Wallace did not fight another battle after Monocacy. In 1865, he sat on commissions that tried both the conspirators involved in the Lincoln Assassination and Henry Wirz, the commandant of the infamous Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp. Out of the army, Wallace served as New Mexico’s territorial governor in the 1870s before, in 1880, publishing the novel that would make him known worldwide. Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ became an almost instant bestseller, making Wallace tens of thousands. In 1881, Wallace took a position as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. On February 15, 1905, he died at the age of 77. He is buried at his childhood home in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

  Unlike Wallace, Jubal Early still had lots of fighting to go before peace in 1865. His command in the Shenandoah Valley during the fall of 1864 saw three straight large defeats at Third Winchester, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek. A fourth defeat in 1865 at Waynesboro led to his removal from command. After the war, rather than surrender, Early fled to Mexico and then Canada. Returning to Virginia in 1869, Early was always critical of the Federal administration and became a leading figure in the budding Lost Cause movement. He, like Wallace, died at the age of 77, albeit in 1894. Early is buried in Lynchburg, Virginia, site of his most important victory.

  Fighting with George Davis on the skirmish line, Judson Spofford from the 10th Vermont was initially believed to be the last surviving Union veteran from the battle of Monocacy. After the war, he moved to Idaho and, upon his death in 1938, was buried in Arlington Cemetery. However, he predeceased the genuine last-known surviving Union soldier, Horace Anderson, who died two months after Spofford. (jh)

  The veterans of Monocacy continued fighting as well. On both sides, they fought until the war’s conclusion in 1865. Some returned to Monocacy, like Ervin Dunbar, who walked the overgrown battlefield in 1913. A soldier in the 10th Vermont, Dunbar “called at the Thomas house and got water where 49 years before we would not let McCausland’s and Gordon’s men drink.” Others went to dedicate monuments to fallen comrades. The last known veteran of the battle, Horace Anderson, who served as an artillerist in Frederick Alexander’s Baltimore Light Artillery, died in 1937—three years after the battlefield’s designation as a National Park Site.

  Looking from the gun line of the Monroe Artillery at the Worthington farm towards the location of the Federal battle line on the other side of the trees. Such proximity to homes put the citizens of the Monocacy River extremely close to the fighting. (rq)

  The Civilians’ Experience at the Battle of Monocacy

  APPENDIX A

  BY RYAN T. QUINT

  The civilians living along the Monocacy River on what would become the battlefield on July 9, 1864, were no strangers to war. It seemed that the opposing armies were constantly coming through their yards or setting up temporary headquarters on their way to battlefields down the road.

  But on July 9, the armies didn’t move on. They stayed, and they fought for hours along the winding river, leaving the families huddled in basements. When the Confederates finally marched away victoriously, they left a landscape forever changed.

  The families most impacted by the battle were the Bests, Worthingtons, Thomases, and Gambrills. Other nearby homes and families certainly saw and heard the contending armies, but the families mentioned above found themselves surrounded by the battle, consumed by it, even potential casualties of it.

  Located on the north side of the Monocacy, the Best farm became a position for Confederate artillery and sharpshooters. Belonging to Charles Trail, who lived in Frederick, the Best farm got its name from the family that tenanted on the land, working the farm in exchange for staying there. David Best had started the arrangement, but by the time of the battle, his eldest son, John Best, had taken over much of the work.

  On the morning of July 9, the Bests tried to gather as much of their crops as they could even as the two armies came into contact. The crop harvest came to a sudden end as John Massie’s Fluvanna Artillery rolled up next to their home and began to unlimber. Hustling to their basement, the Bests took shelter as Union cannons destroyed their barn and skirmishers popped away at each other. Emerging from their home, the Bests rebuilt their barn and lived on, John Best working the land until the late 1880s.

  John and Margaret Best found their farming on the morning of July 9, 1864, interrupted by the outbreak of fighting. The property they rented from Charles Trail was damaged badly during the battle, including the loss of a barn. By the time of the 1870 census, the Bests had recovered from some of the Civil War damages, and their estate was valued at $6,000. (mnb)(mnb)

  John Worthington purchased “Clifton” in 1862. His family watched as the battle unfolded around their property, leaving the dead, wounded, and debris. (mnb)

  Crossing the Monocacy River, the first home Confederate troops came into contact with was Clifton, the Worthington home. The fighting around the Worthington farm is told in Chapters 7-9, but for the Worthington family, like the Bests, the day started with last-minute crop harvesting. Glenn Worthington later remembered, “The crop of wheat which had ripened under the summer skies, on the Worthington and Thomas farms, as well as elsewhere in the community had been reaped and was standing in shocks over the wheat fields, ready to be gathered into barns or put into stacks.”

  Utilizing “a few” slaves that he owned, John Worthington hurriedly went from shock to shock, hauling and loading them into a small wagon. But as the cannonading grew louder from the other side of the river, Worthington called an end to the haul. He ordered that the family horses be untethered and brought to nearby Sugar Loaf Mountain so that they might avoid being captured. As his slaves went off, Worthington turned to protecting his family. He “had heavy two-inch boards put across the cellar windows . . . also he had several tubs and a barrel filled with water, placed in the cellar.”

  “Araby,” the oldest surviving home on the Monocacy battlefield, was originally constructed in the 1780s for a wealthy landowner, James Marshall. By the Civil War, C. K. Thomas lived in the home with his family and took shelter in the cellar. (ts)

  Through one of the windows of the Worthington’s basement, young Glenn Worthington watched the battle of Monocacy unfold. The Worthingtons were just one family forced to take shelter as the fighting began along the banks of the Monocacy River. (cm)

  With fighting intensifying, the Worthingtons took in Frank Mantz, a telegraph operator for the B&O, and his family. Taking cover in the cellar, the families, especially young Glenn watched and listened as first John McClausland’s and then John Gordon’s men came up to fight.

  At the tail end of the battle, John Worthington nearly became a casualty of the battle. Exiting his home, Worthington saw Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, “a very distinguished person in his day and generation,” and went to shake Breckinridge’s hand. As they did so, a last rifle shot of defiance zipped by, fired from the retreating Federals. “Mr. Worthington, it is not safe for you to be here,” Breckinridge said. “Bullets are still flying and you might be seriously hurt.” Contesting that it was just as dangerous for Breckinridge as he, Worthington surrendered the point when Breckinridge responded, “It is my duty to be here and not
yours.” Glenn remembered his father “often told the story of the little incident, always with manifest respect and admiration for the distinguished and dignified Southern statesman and soldier.”

  While John Worthington escaped injury, his son Glenn did not. At the end of the battle, Confederate forces used the Worthington farm as a staging area for wounded soldiers as well as destroying excess weapons behind the home. For the latter, soldiers gathered muskets or rifles, covered them in kindling, and then lit a fire. After the blaze, Glenn Worthington saw a bayonet and, writing in the third person, explained, he “desired [it] for his own purposes.” But as he dragged the bayonet out, the young boy accidentally shoved a hot coal towards a paper cartridge that exploded with a flash. “Then there was a yelp, akin to the rebel yell, and some pitying Confederate picked the boy up in his arms and carried him, blinded and yelling, to the house.” The blinding proved only temporary, though, “and the disfigurement was not noticeable at the end of a year.”

  Moving on from the Worthington farm, the battle descended on the Thomas farm, Araby, belonging to Christian Keefer Thomas. Like his neighbors, Thomas also spent the morning of the battle hauling in wheat shocks. Sending his horses along with John Worthington’s slaves to Sugar Loaf Mountain, Thomas looked to the protection of his family. Taking shelter in Araby’s basement, Thomas joined his wife and three children, as well as a family friend, Mamie Tyler, and a black female slave. Soon adding to the crowd in the basement was the wife of James Gambrill, Antoinette, and her two sons.

  Maj. Peter Vredenburgh served with the 14th New Jersey at Monocacy. At the height of the battle, he ran into the cellar to check on the Thomas family, who had befriended him when he was stationed near the Monocacy in 1862. Vredenburgh survived the battle but was later killed at the battle of Third Winchester. (mnb)

  James Gambrill sits with his family after the Civil War. During the battle of Monocacy, Gambrill and his wife, Antoinette, only had two children as opposed to the eight seen in the photograph. Antoinette and the two sons hid in the cellar of the Thomas farm while James stayed near his mill. (mnb)

  As the fighting began to swing towards the Thomas farm, Maj. Peter Vredenburgh of the 14th New Jersey ran into the home to check on the family. Before joining the VI Corps, the New Jersey men had been posted at the Monocacy Junction, and during the posting, Vredenburgh had become closely acquainted with the Thomases. Running into the home and downstairs, Vredenburgh found the family and their fellow refugees “in the cellar frightened to death.” Vredenburgh rushed through the house “and locked the drawers—some of the doors and brought downstairs a basket of silver that they had packed up.” Making sure the family was settled in place for the coming fight, Vredenburgh prepared to return to the 14th New Jersey, but the occupants of the basement “hung on me and wanted me to stay,” and asked him to bring a wounded Confederate left over from McCausland’s attacks downstairs. Vredenburgh helped the wounded man, who “received our most devoted attention, our handkerchiefs were used in bathing the wounds with ice water,” Mamie Tyler wrote.

  The Thomas farm became the epicenter of the battle’s worst fighting. “You can imagine how strange the sounds outside of those walls,” Mamie Tyler later wrote. “Minnie balls slashed the shrubbery while the larger missiles of war’s fearful instruments twisted huge limbs from the trees, leveled down chimneys and tore out an angle of the house.” After the Confederate victory, the Thomas family climbed out and helped the wounded that now surrounded their home.

  James Gambrill’s mill was originally a two-story structure. The building was adapted and used as a visitor center for the National Park Service starting in the 1990s until the park’s new visitor center opened in 2007. (mnb)

  Visiting his family in early July, Samuel Thomas (center), was forced into service with the Union army along with his friends Julius Anderson (left) and Hugh Gatchell (right). On the morning of the battle, a Union staff officer let the three of them go, and they subsequently hid with James Gambrill on the mill property. (mnb)

  Before and during the battle’s chaotic and bloody finish, the Thomases also worried for three of their missing family and friends—Samuel Thomas, Christian’s son; Julius Anderson, fiancé of Christian’s daughter Alice; and Hugh Gatchell, Mamie Tyler’s fiancé. They had made their way to Araby for Independence Day, but in the confusion of Lew Wallace trying to get troops to defend the Monocacy River, the three men found themselves drafted on the spot and impressed into one of Erastus Tyler’s regiments. On July 9, as the fighting got underway, an officer spoke to the three: “Young men, if you should be captured fighting in civilian clothes, you are likely to be shot. General Wallace is now at some distance and I advise you to get away from here as fast as you can.” The three listened without a second’s notice and ran towards James Gambrill’s mill.

  Gambrill had stayed behind at his mill to protect the property after he sent his wife and children to Araby. He sat on his porch talking to General Ricketts as Ricketts’s division lounged on the Gambrill property, drawing rations. But when Confederate guns from across the river opened fired, Ricketts’s men formed up, and Gambrill and the three men ran for cover in the protection of the mill’s complex. Some of them thought it a good idea to seek cover in the mill’s waterwheel, but soon “their most fearful apprehension was that the huge overshot waterwheel might start revolving while they were taking shelter there, but during the three hours and more of their concealment, it remained motionless and they came forth, finally, unscathed.” It was good that the wheel hadn’t moved because soon the grounds of the Gambrill Mill churned to pieces by the dozens of Confederate cannon and Frederick Alexander’s battery firing back—escape from the churning wheel and battle both would have been impossible.

  With the exception of Glenn Worthington’s self-inflicted wound, all of the civilians came away unhurt from the battle of Monocacy. Each of their stories—like those of thousands of soldiers who fought there—is full of drama and harrowing examples of survival. Then, just as quickly as it had come with all its fury, the war moved on.

  The home of Dr. Richard Hammond, where Jubal Early made his headquarters early on July 9, 1864, no longer exists. One can still go to the site of the building, however, at the northwest corner of Second and Market Streets. (rq)

  The Ransom of Frederick

  APPENDIX B

  BY RYAN T. QUINT

  On July 9, 1864, at around 8 a.m., William G. Cole, the mayor of Frederick, received a pair of notes. Both came from the headquarters of Lt. Gen. Jubal Early, who had set up in the home of Dr. Richmond Hammond while Confederate forces moved through the town. As Cole read the messages, he called the town’s municipal government together.

  “We require of the Mayor and town authorities $200,000 in current money for the use of this army,” the first message started. “This contribution may be supplied by furnishing the medical department with $50,000 in stores at current prices; the Commissary department with stores to the same amount; the Ordnance department with the same and the Quartermaster’s department with a like amount,” the demand conditioned.

  If the first levy for $200,000 was not enough, the second message brought another order—this time from Early’s Chief of Commissary, Wells Hawks, demanding 500 barrels of flour, 3,000 pounds of coffee, 3,000 pounds of salt, 6,000 pounds of sugar, and finishing off with 20,000 pounds of bacon.

  As Jubal Early had endorsed the messages and sent them off to Cole, the commanding general made sure to be clear the demands were to be taken seriously. Looking to Dr. Hammond’s wife, Mary, Early said, “if the demand is granted, very good, if not, Frederick will be reduced to ashes. We do this in retaliation for similar acts done by the Federal forces within our borders.” As if to soften the blow of the ultimatum, Early assured, “You need not fear as timely warning will be given you to leave with your family.”

  Gathering the town council and others, Cole began to work on a response to the two messages. The first of their problems to address was
the fact that a $200,000 levy—or ransom, pending Early’s decision to burn the town— would financially devastate the town’s 8,000 citizens. Drafting a reply, Cole and the others wrote, “The assessment imposed by your order will take from the citizens of this place nearly one tenth of the taxable property of the city.” Pushing further, the town’s leaders continued, “In view therefore of the great and onerous burthen thrown upon our citizens, many of whom are indigent and unable to bear the loss, and as the assessment made in other places in Maryland is relatively much less than that imposed upon our city, we respectfully request you to reconsider and abate the said assessment.” Signing their names, the town’s leaders sent their request back to Early.

  Involving himself in politics starting in the 1830s, William G. Cole served as mayor of Frederick from 1859-65. (hsfc)

  In response to Early, Frederick’s leaders referenced “other places in Maryland” that Confederate forces had ransomed before coming to town in an argument to lower the levy. On July 6 the town of Hagerstown had been ransomed for $20,000, and on July 8 the citizens of Middletown faced a demand for $5,000.