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| Battle of the Monocacy. |
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Tyler's remaining force, half enveloped by the swarming foe, was compelled to follow; and the general and his staff, separated from them, dashed into the woods, and barely escaped capture.
“His gallantry and self-sacrificing devotion,” said Wallace, “are above all commendation of words.”
Pursuit was feeble, for the bulk of Early's cavalry, under Johnson, was then marching on Baltimore by the Liberty road, and the remainder, under McCausland, were too badly cut up in the fight, for any vigorous action after it.1 The fugitive army was joined by Ricketts's three absent regiments at New-market, and covered the retreat of the wearied troops; and at the distance of twelve miles from the field of strife, the whole army bivouacked.
So ended the battle of the Monocacy, in the ultimate defeat of the few National troops there engaged, but in triumph for the National cause; for the check given to the flushed invaders, by Wallace, in that gallant fight of eight hours, which gave time for re-enforcements to reach Washington, saved the Capital.2 So declared the Secretary of War and the Lieutenant-General.3 But for that check of full thirty hours (for Early was so smitten that he could not move until noon the next day), the Capital would doubtless have been his prize, and a heap of black ruins its possible fate.
In view of all the circumstances, the battle of the Monocacy appears as one of the most important and brilliant of the war.
On the evening after the battle, the inhabitants of Baltimore were intensely
1 Wallace warmly commended the gallantry of Colonel Clendennin, who, he said, was “as true a cavalry soldier as ever mounted a horse.” He was cut off from the main body at the time of Ricketts's retreat. Throwing his followers into the village of Urbana, he there repeatedly repulsed the pursuing cavalry, and in one bold charge, saber in hand, he captured the battle-flag of the Seventeenth Virginia.
2 The number of National troops engaged in the battle, including Ricketts's command, was about 5,500, while about 20,000 of the Confederates were in the fight, or near enough to furnish assistance. The character of the battle may be inferred from the fact that the loss of the Nationals was more than thirty per cent. of their number, being 1,959, of whom 98 were killed, 579 were wounded, and 1,282 were missing, many of the latter having straggled in the retreat. The Confederates took only 700 of them prisoners. The estimated loss of the Confederates was equal to that of the Nationals.
On account of the urgency of the retreat, the want of ambulances, and especially because of the desertion of the railway agent with his trains, Wallace was compelled to leave his dead and wounded on the field. In his report he said that orders had been given to collect the bodies of the slain “in one burial-ground on the battlefield, suitable for a monument, upon which I propose to write: These men died to save the National Capital, and they did save it.”3 General Grant, in his final report, said: “His (Wallace's) force was not sufficient to insure success; but he. fought the enemy, nevertheless, and although it resulted in a defeat to our arms, yet it detained the enemy, and thereby served to enable General Wright to reach Washington with two divisions of the Sixth, and the advance of the Nineteenth Corps, before him.”
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