Ryan Quint and the Monocacy 150th

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the battle of Monocacy—”The Battle that Saved Washington.” How appropriate, then, that we use the opportunity to welcome Ryan Quint to our regular cast of ECW contributors. Ryan started guesting with us last year with a well-done series about the battle of Monocacy (worth checking out, if you haven’t already, in honor of today’s sesquicentennial):

Part I: A General Fallen from Grace: Lew Wallace before Monocacy

Part II: A General Redeemed: Lew Wallace and the Battle of Monocacy

Part III: A General Remembered: Lew Wallace after the Battle of Monocacy

“The battle of Monocacy is a crucial (yet, sadly, not-well known) battle,” Ryan says.

“In the summer of 1864, the Union war effort was going terribly, and President Lincoln was sure of his defeat in the coming election,” Ryan explains. “Grant’s forces had been bloodily stymied in the Overland Campaign and were now stagnated in the trenches of Petersburg; Sherman’s army group had most recently been repulsed at Kennesaw Mountain; and Union forces had been evicted from the Shenandoah Valley. To top it all off, Jubal Early led some 20,000 rebels on a third invasion of the North, catching the officials in Washington completely off-guard.”

Born and raised in Maine, Ryan moved to Virginia to earn a degree in history from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. While there, he has interned at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. His Civil War interests focus on the Union armies and the Third Confederate invasion in the summer of 1864. He has an essay, “Jackson’s Flank Attack Reconsidered,” that will be appearing in a forthcoming volume in the Emerging Civil War Series.