by Quint, Ryan;
One of the New Yorkers wounded around this time was the regiment’s colonel, William Seward, Jr., son of Lincoln’s secretary of state. One shot brought down Seward’s horse, and as the dying animal collapsed to the ground, it thrashed over Seward’s leg and broke the bone. Two men helped get Seward and send him to the rear.
By now, the full force of Gordon’s division pressed forward, and the division commander went in with his men, with a consequence. “In that vortex of fire,” Gordon wrote, “my favorite battle-horse, presented to me by generous comrades, which had never hitherto been wounded, was struck by a Minié ball, and plunged and fell in the midst of my men, carrying me down with him.” Unhorsed for a moment, one of Gordon’s staff officers offered his own mount and the general climbed back into the saddle to continue the attack.
William Terry’s Virginians advanced, moving to the left of York’s Louisianans. The Virginians’ adrenaline got the best of them, though, and they began to hustle, breaking their formations. “Stop running and walk,” Terry called out to them, “or you will break yourselves down and we will not be able to fight the enemy when you get to them.” Listening to their commander, the Virginians pulled up, readjusting their lines before moving on.
The second son of Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward, Jr., led the 9th New York Heavy Artillery into action at Monocacy. He recovered from his wounds at the battle and went on to a career as a banker, politician, and as an active member of the Military Order Loyal Legion of the United States, a fraternal organization for Union officers. (jwk)
With pressure mounting, Ricketts’s Federals began to fall back from the Thomas farm. From their first position, the soldiers retreated to the Georgetown Pike, which, because of years of use, had sunk down below the rest of the earth. This created a natural-made trench that the Union soldiers ducked into, hiding below the folds to reload and then peeking back up to fire.
Not all the Federal soldiers could fit in the pike itself, but they still found protection. The Georgetown Pike moved towards the Monocacy River and then swung to the east to reach the covered bridge, now just burning embers. But before the bridge’s construction, the pike continued straight to the river to a ferry crossing. The ferry went out of business with the bridge’s opening, but the sunken path down to the ferry still existed, and soldiers in Col. Matthew R. McClennan’s brigade claimed that for their protection.
Ricketts’s men had taken up position for their last stand.
Gordon’s Confederates followed closely on their heels. Just as some of McCausland’s men before them had taken up shelter in the Thomas farm, so now did Gordon’s. Before they could do that, however, they needed to drive out the last stubborn vestiges of Federal resistance. A handful of Federal soldiers remained holed up in the Thomas home itself, firing out the windows as the Confederates closed in.
From the Worthington farm came the Confederate response: artillery. Guns near Clifton bombarded the brick Thomas home, and one of the shots “struck the side of the house at the dining room, crashed through the brick wall, fell on the table where a number of knives and forks lay, and exploding, scattered them in every direction.” As Federal soldiers scrambled from the house, Confederate soldiers snatched them as a couple more shells hit the home for good measure.
Maj. Edward Dillingham of the 10th Vermont found himself caught up in the moment as he commanded infantry along the Baker Valley Road. “Give it to them, boys, we have on them on the flank,” he called out, “pitch it into them; this is fun.” The fun ended with Gordon’s attack breaking through Ricketts’s line. Dillingham was later killed at the battle of Third Winchester, in September 1864. (emh)
The Confederate sharpshooters, taking up places in the recently-evacuated home, began to fire down into the Georgetown Pike. Colonel William Henry, commanding the 10th Vermont, watched the sharpshooters’ fire from the home until one of his soldiers “caught me by the coat-tail and pulled me to the ground, saying ‘that will do, Colonel, the blooming rebs mean you.’”
Confederate artillery had cleared the Thomas farm, but it was not possible for Frederick Alexander’s battery to do the same—they had run out of ammunition. The gunners had been engaged since first thing that morning and now, as watches clicked closer toward 4:00 p.m., there was nothing left in the ammunition caissons. It fell solely to Ricketts’s men to fight against the Confederate onslaught.
But the Union infantry men were increasingly reaching into empty cartridge boxes, as well. After firing their last bullets, the soldiers took to “borrowing of their dead and wounded comrades,” the chaplain of the 10th Vermont wrote.
Charging through the Thomas farm, Gordon’s men closed on the Georgetown Pike. A small stream wandered across their front—not enough to pose an obstacle, but enough to leave a stark reminder of the brutal fighting. “In this ravine the fighting was desperate and at close quarters,” Gordon wrote. “To and fro the battle swayed across the little stream, the dead and wounded from both sides mingling their blood in its waters; and when the struggle was ended a crimsoned current ran towards the river.”
Federal and Confederate troops fired devastating volleys at close range, destroying ranks and leaving acrid smoke hanging thick in the air. “I recall no charge of the war, except that of [Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle] in which my brave fellows seemed so swayed by an enthusiasm which amounted almost to a martial delirium,” Gordon remembered. Expressing a similar sentiment, a fighting man in the 126th Ohio jotted in his diary, “our brave boys like men battled with the tyrants with seemingly the energy of lions.”
Watching his division’s attack, John Gordon came to the conclusion that he needed help. “I dispatched two staff officers in succession to ask for a brigade to use upon the enemy’s flank,” Gordon reported. It did not take long for the officers to reach Gordon’s superior, John C. Breckinridge, who had set himself up in the front yard of the Worthington farm. Breckinridge sent orders for his other force, commanded by Brig. Gen. John Echols, but Echols’s division was still near Frederick, so it would be some time before they showed up.
In their stand-up, knock-down fight, it was not entirely clear just how much time Gordon’s men had left in them; he couldn’t wait. Riding over to William Terry, Gordon ordered the Virginians to move around Ricketts’s right and outflank the Federals. The Georgians and Louisianans would remain where they were, holding Ricketts in place with their heavy musketry.
The Virginians started their move to the left. “This was the most exciting time I witnessed during the war,” one of the Old Dominion soldiers wrote. Terry’s men found a “hollow” that carried a small spring towards the Monocacy. “Concealed by the bank on their right these Confederate veterans reached the hollow almost unperceived,” Glenn Worthington documented.
Union soldiers taking cover in the Thomas farm were soon sent scrambling for better cover when Confederate artillery opened fire on the house. Damage to the home’s porch, no longer standing, was still visible in 1913. (mnb)
Though concealed from Ricketts’s infantry, Terry’s men were spotted by Confederate artillery crews across the river. Similar to how Ramseur’s men wore captured Federal uniforms, it is likely that Terry’s soldiers also exchanged uniforms when they captured Martinsburg, and as they advanced, the gunners across the river “mistook us for the enemy and fired at my flag, the balls striking very close,” a Virginian recalled. Holding a Confederate battle flag, the soldier frantically waved his banner back and forth and as the wind took hold of the Southern Cross, the Confederate batteries ceased firing.
Virginians and Louisianans in Gordon’s division were able to get extremely close to the Union battle line without being discovered by advancing behind the natural contours of the ground, which can be seen here. Popping over the hollows, the Confederates outflanked the Federals and began to push them back. (rq)
Avoiding their close call with friendly fire, the Virginians pushed on until in a near-perfect flanking position. Popping out of the hollow, the Vir
ginians began to fire into the ranks of Ricketts’s right, held by troops in McClennan’s brigade.
Simultaneously hit from the center by the rest of Gordon’s men, the right by Terry’s men, and the rear by Confederate artillery, McClennan’s regiments started to break. The commanding officer of the 110th Ohio reported, “seeing the enemy coming down upon us in overwhelming numbers with imminent danger of having my command annihilated, I gave the order to fall back.”
When McClennan’s men started to fall back, Ricketts’s entire line became unhinged. Confederate victory was close at hand.
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The heaviest pressure of Gordon’s flanking maneuver fell on Col. Matthew McClennan’s brigade. McClennan held temporary command of the brigade in lieu of Col. John Staunton, its real commander, not being on the battlefield. (ol)
In conjunction with Gordon’s attack, at 3:30 p.m., Stephen Ramseur unleashed a third attack on the Federal positions at the Monocacy Junction. His North Carolina skirmishers once more started to push forward, screaming the rebel yell as they went.
The North Carolinians had been stymied twice before, and the delay soured Brig. Gen. Robert Johnston, who, one of his subordinates recounted, “was not in a very humorous mood” as his men seemed unable to push the Federal skirmishers away. This time, though, the Confederates would not give up. “I was suffering (sick) so that I could barely walk,” the 12th North Carolina’s colonel wrote. “However, I went forward to the ravine [that had earlier helped the Confederates get close to the railroad junction] and here halted and had picked men as videttes to reconnoiter and see all they could.” Their reconnaissance finished, the Carolinians surged forward.
Davis’s and Brown’s skirmishers held tenaciously for a little more than an hour. But then Charles Brown figured his men had had enough; earlier in the day General Tyler had given him “a discretionary order to fall back while I could do so with safety,” and Brown decided that moment had come. The Marylanders picked themselves up and ran across the railroad bridge ties, leaping from one track to another. On the other side of the Monocacy, Brown’s men “occupied the rifle-pits” and continued firing.
After being driven from their original line near the Thomas farm complex, Ricketts’s men took up position in the sunken Georgetown Pike. Looking out over the fields in front of them, the Federals opened a devastating fire on the Confederates as they came over the hill in the distance. (rq)
Left behind on the western side of the river, George Davis needed to make a decision. His Vermonters, battered during the day and almost out of ammunition, were dangerously close to being cut off from the rest of Wallace’s force. It was close to 5:00 p.m. now, and Davis later wrote that he looked to his left and saw “our third division line broken, scattered and fleeing.” It was time to go—but the North Carolinians closed in quicker and quicker. “It was my last moment to escape, and in all human probability too late to escape.”
But he had to try.
The monument to troops from Pennsylvania was dedicated in 1908, commemorating the actions of the 67th, 87th, and 138th Pennsylvania at Monocacy. Of those regiments, however, the 67th actually did not fight at the battle, instead waiting behind near Monrovia with Colonel John F. Staunton. (cm)
The Federal Retreat
CHAPTER TEN
5:00 P.M.-MIDNIGHT, JULY 10
Lew Wallace had made his stand for as long as he could, but now it was time to go. Ricketts’s division streamed from the Georgetown Pike towards the Gambrill Mill, near where Wallace had made his headquarters during the day. As the VI Corps troops retreated from Gordon’s division, Wallace rode towards his right flank—Tyler’s position at the Stone Bridge. With Ricketts used up, it fell to Tyler’s Marylanders and Ohioans to cover Wallace’s retreat to Baltimore, and he wanted to make sure they explicitly knew it. If Tyler retreated too soon and left the Stone Bridge open to Robert Rodes’s division, Wallace’s entire force could be encircled and destroyed.
Before riding to Tyler, Wallace watched Lt. George Davis lead his men to the railroad bridge. The iron trusses rose about 45 feet over the Monocacy River. What’s more, the bridge had “no side rails for protection of pedestrians, and one in walking across, would have to walk on the cross ties, except that there was a narrow footway of boards through the middle.” Because of the acrobatics needed to cross the bridge on foot, “it was against the rules of the [B&O] for any pedestrian to cross the bridge, except employees.” But on this day, circumstances necessitated breaking the rules.
Charles Brown and his contingent of Marylanders had earlier managed to cross the bridge with ease, but they were not being hounded by Ramseur’s Confederates close on their heels. “[T]he enemy were probably not 20 feet behind us, calling out to surrender,” Davis wrote later. Running with Davis, Pvt. Daniel Freeman remembered “one of my comrades under the Pike Bridge fighting a dozen Johnnies charging down the railroad toward him. He was riddled with lead.”
The Vermonters pushed on, racing the Confederates to the other side of the bridge. At least one man lost his footing, Davis reported, and “fell through the bridge to the river . . . and was taken to Andersonville.” Chasing their prey, the Confederates hurried on, led by the colonel of the 20th North Carolina, who “took the flag and lead the Regt across the R.R. Bridge in pursuit of the routed enemy.”
Davis and his men made it across the bridge and hustled after the rest of Ricketts’s division, the entire Federal force making its way to the Baltimore Pike. They managed to outrun their Confederate pursuers, who eventually grew tired of the chase and begrudgingly returned to the Junction. George Davis brought his men out from the clutches of the Confederates, and in 1892 received the Medal of Honor for his action at Monocacy. But it came at a cost for the 75 men who had gone out first thing that morning as skirmishers: Davis reported, “Of the 75 men . . . 15 were killed or wounded, and ten captured.”
While Davis led his men to safety, another 10th Vermont soldier also distinguished himself enough to receive a Medal of Honor. Holding the left flank of Ricketts’s division, the 10th Vermont did not hear the first calls to retreat from the Georgetown Pike. Riding up to the Green Mountain boys, a staff officer called out to the regiment’s commander, “For God’s sake, Colonel, get your regiment out of here as soon as possible to the Baltimore pike.” Under a heavy fire from the Confederates seemingly closing in from every direction, the Vermonters retreated as quickly as they could. In the middle of the retreat, Cpl. Alexander Scott took one of the regiment’s flags and began to carry it to safety when the other of the regiment’s color bearers pleaded with Scott to also take the second flag, too exhausted to carry it further. Now carrying the Stars and Stripes as well as the regimental flag, Scott “carried both stands of colors through the trying ordeal of retreat and did not give them up until he returned them to their appointed custodians several days later,” the regiment’s historian wrote subsequently. Scott’s bravery was recognized with a Medal of Honor in 1897.
A dramatization of Lt. George Davis bringing his skirmishers over the Monocacy River by hopping over the railroad ties. (wfb/ofk)
Nineteen years old at the battle of Monocacy, Alexander Scott immigrated to the United States with his family from Canada as a young boy. When the Civil War started, his father enlisted in the famed Vermont Brigade and died of sickness in 1862. Scott enlisted shortly before and, because of his actions in the fall of 1863, was promoted to corporal. Wounded at the battle of Cedar Creek in October 1864, Scott earned a medical discharge, lived the rest of his life in Vermont, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. (mnb)
Beyond Davis and Scott, the rest of Ricketts’s division had dramatic escape tales. Some of the regiments began to break down, and the retreat became an every-man-for-himself scramble. “I got separated from the rest,” a soldier in the 151st New York wrote to his wife. “I put for the woods and laid down to rest a little, and the first thing I knew the ‘rebs’ were all around the woods and I couldn’t get out. It wasn’t long
before some of our men came where I was in the same fix I was in, so we kept ourselves hidden.” The New Yorker and his comrades were not discovered.
The adjutant of the 8th Illinois Cavalry had an especially hair-raising adventure. He got in a race with a mounted Confederate with a fence separating the two. As they rode, the adjutant “turned and fired a shot, as he said, for his mother. After exhausting his charges, he threw his pistol at the rebel.” The Illinoisan was captured, but later escaped.
Then there were those Federals who were captured and did not manage to get away. Retreating towards the Baltimore Pike, Pvt. Alfred Roe of the 9th New York Heavy Artillery was stopped by a cry of, “Look here, Yank!” Turning, Roe “found myself gazing into the mouth of a six-shooter, held in the hand of a stalwart cavalryman.” The Confederate demanded Roe empty his pockets, only found 35 cents and asked angrily, “Is that all you have?” When Roe told him yes, the cavalryman spat, “Well, keep it then. It isn’t worth taking.” Roe and the other prisoners of war were rounded up and brought back to the Georgetown Pike.
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Alfred S. Roe fought with the 9th New York Heavy Artillery at Monocacy. Captured in the confusion of the retreat, Roe was rounded up with the rest of the prisoners and eventually brought to Danville, Virginia. At the end of almost eight months in captivity, the exchanged Union soldiers “reaching the Federal lines, barely had strength to greet their friends,” Roe wrote. (ar)
Those Federals who made it to the Baltimore Pike were covered by Tyler’s brigade, still standing in their battle line. Covering Wallace’s retreat, Tyler’s men had one last action to fight out at Monocacy. Near 6:00 p.m., Rodes, who had been content with skirmishing the entire day, once more ordered his troops forward to force the crossing at the Stone Bridge.