A Thousand Words a Battle: Monocacy

Battle of Monocacy
July 9, 1864

Nearly 15,000 Confederate soldiers led by Lt. Gen. Jubal Early threatened Washington, D.C. in the early days of July 1864. Having crossed the Potomac River and come through the passes of South Mountain, the Confederates closed on Frederick, Maryland. Barely fifty miles away from the nation’s capital, Early’s men found waiting for themselves a patched-together force of some 6,500 Federal soldiers commanded by Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace. The Federals took up positions behind the winding Monocacy River and challenged their foe to come. In the morning of July 9, a brigade of Confederate cavalry splashed across the Monocacy in an attempt to outflank the Union battle line and crested a ridge covered by the home of John T. Worthington. Taking cover in the home’s cellar, John’s six-year-old son Glenn Worthington watched the subsequent battle unfold and wrote his recollections nearly seventy years later:

The dismounted cavalrymen, perhaps 350 of them, armed and accoutered after the fashion of Southern troopers, led by officers on horse back, moved up the incline toward the Worthington house, and climbing the fence running from the house straight to the Monocacy, formed in line of battle in the front field of the Worthington farm and moved forward toward the front line of the enemy who was in large part concealed behind the division fence between the Worthington and Thomas farms, near several walnut trees and a locust tree still standing along the fence. . .

Lying down behind the division fence on the Thomas side, and hidden from view by the fence and growing corn, lay two battalions of Ricketts’ seasoned soldiers. The only man on horseback being General Ricketts himself, sitting quietly and soldierly on his horse, at the left of the line. . . . Toward these horsemen, and toward the clump of walnut trees, McCausland advanced his line through the cornfield with banners and guidons waving and a general feeling of an easy victory prevailing. Onward they went through the growing corn, drawing nearer and nearer to the enemy, neither side firing a shot until the Confederate line had reached a small elevation in the ground, with 125 yards of the division fence. 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. Watched from a distance the whole rebel line disappeared as if swallowed up in earth. Save and except several riderless horses galloping about, and a few mounted officers bravely facing the storm, the attacking force had vanished. As a matter of fact, not a few lay motionless and silent amidst the broken and trodden corn, never to march, or ride, or charge again. Many others lay sweltering and helpless under the burning sun, from gunshot wounds inflicted by their countrymen, then enemies in a horrible civil war. Still others, unhurt, had fallen to the ground to escape the deadly rifle fire and were crawling along, under cover of the remaining stalks of broken corn, to and over a rise in the ground and into a depression out of range of the enemy’s guns. There was more firing and more empty saddles, and more riderless horses galloping about, and more men killed and wounded. But once over the small elevation in the field and into the depression out of sight for a moment, the unwounded foot cavalry rose to their feet and ran. Back to the Worthington house they fled and beyond, now pursued by the blue-clad Federals. . . .

The attacking force consisted of brave and experienced soldiers, but for the moment they were panic stricken by the deadly ambush into which they were unwittingly led. The officers tried in vain to rally the men. They swore at them and threatened them with sword and pistol, but for a while they would give no heed. After retreating past the house for a few hundred yards they were halted and formed into ranks again. 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, as the retreating force passed the house. Mrs. Worthington was moved to exclaim: ‘Poor creatures, it means death to them either way.’[1]

After an entire day of fighting, some 2,200 Federal and Confederates were killed and wounded. Though defeated, Lew Wallace’s men had bought their capital city a valuable commodity: time. Thus, the battle of Monocacy came to be known as the “Battle that Saved Washington”, and is why, when Glenn Worthington, now a respected judge in Frederick, wrote his history of the battle in 1932 he titled it, Fighting for Time: The Battle of Monocacy.

 — Ryan Quint

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[1] Glenn H. Worthington, Fighting for Time: The Battle of Monocacy (Baltimore: Day Printing Company, 1932), 118-20.