The Battle of Monocacy (also known as Monocacy Junction) was fought on July 9, 1864, about 6 miles (9.7 km) from Frederick, Maryland, as part of the Valley Campaigns of 1864 during the American Civil War. Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early defeated Union forces under Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace. The battle was part of Early's raid through the Shenandoah Valley and into Maryland in an attempt to divert Union forces from their siege of Gen. Robert E. Lee's army at Petersburg, Virginia.
The battle was the northernmost Confederate victory of the war. Afterward, the Union troops retreated to Baltimore, Maryland, and the Confederates continued toward Washington. But because the battle had delayed Early's march for a day, Union reinforcements had time to get to the Union capital before the Confederates. Early launched an attack on Washington on July 12 at the Battle of Fort Stevens, but the Confederates were unsuccessful and retreated to Virginia.
In May and June, as part of the Valley Campaigns of 1864, Union General-in-Chief Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant planned a coordinated movement of troops against Confederates in Virginia. It was during this campaign that Lt. Gen. Jubal Early's Confederates defeated Union forces to open a path to Washington, D.C. After skirmishing with Maj. Gen. David Hunter's men outside Lynchburg, Virginia, on June 17 and 18, Early increased his forces to nearly 16,000 men and continued to Martinsburg, West Virginia. The outnumbered Union troops had evacuated the town. On June 19, a small Union force at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, burned the bridge across the Potomac River.
Grant reacted to Early's raids at Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry by dispatching two brigades, about 5,000 men, from the 3rd Division of the VI Corps, under Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts, from City Point, Virginia, to Harpers Ferry on July 5, 1864. Until Union troops arrived to defend Washington, the only Federal force between Early and the Union capital was a 2,300-man force (mostly Hundred Days Men) under the command of Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace. At the time, Wallace, who would become better known as the author of Ben-Hur, was in command of the Union's Middle Department and VIII Corps, based in Baltimore. Few of Wallace's men had battle experience. Although Wallace had experience as a battlefield commander, having been the Union Army's youngest major general at the time of his promotion, his military career faltered after he was blamed for the high casualties taken on the first day at the Battle of Shiloh.
In the meantime, agents of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Cumberland, Maryland, and Harpers Ferry reported signs of Early's advance on June 29. John W. Garrett, the president of the railroad and a Union supporter, passed this intelligence, and subsequent reports reached Wallace on July 3. Garrett was concerned about protecting a railroad bridge at Monocacy Junction, Maryland, where it crossed the Monocacy River. The bridge was important to rail connections at Harpers Ferry and points farther west, so Wallace agreed to bring a force to the Monocacy to protect it.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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