Monocacy National Battlefield

While we drove by for a quick look around early, we didn't actually stop at Monocacy until we were on our way out of town.  After three days camping in Maryland we were heading down to Richmond to spend the rest of the week there before we continued north towards our ultimate goal of reaching Maine.

The battle of Monocacy was fought in 1864 and was instrumental in saving Washington, D.C.  Confederate forces were pulled off the front lines in Virginia and sent north to menace the Federal capital in hopes of distracting Grant's forces besieging Richmond.  It almost worked except for the delaying action fought by troops at Monocacy slowed the Confederates just enough that reinforcements shipped north were able to arrive in DC and occupy defensive forts before the Confederates were close enough to actually threaten the city.

I may not be a vexillologist but I enjoy seeing different flags, so of course I had to take pictures of this area in the visitor center.

There was a very nice little area for kids to play and even decorate coloring pages.

There were also dress-up clothes for the kids, both boys and girls clothes that could easily fit over their existing clothes and allow them to make believe they were around at the time of the battle.

 The gift shop may not have been large, but it had quite a few different Civil War products.

The museum is upstairs (though as I recall there was an elevator if you couldn't navigate the stairs).

 This painting is entitled "Through the Wheatfield" by Bill Groff.  "Some of the bloodiest fighting of the day took place as Evans' Georgians crossed the crest of Brooks Hill out of the woods and straight for the Thomas House through the wheat field.  One of the regiments, the 61st Georgia, had crossed the Monocacy River with nearly 150 men.  After the engagement, they could only muster 52 for roll call the next day."

The subtitle "A Battle for Time" is an apt description of the battle as the Federal troops didn't really need to win, they just needed to delay the Confederate advance towards the capital.

 Maryland was in a similar position with the other border states in that it supported slavery and the Union.  Of course it wasn't really allowed to contemplate leaving the Union as that would have left the Federal capital completely surrounded by Confederate land.

 Kentucky and Missouri were the other border/slave states that never seceded from the Union.

 This exhibit showed a bit about the life that soldiers led on the battlefield and out in the country.

You may be more familiar with Lew Wallace as the author of Ben Hur, but before he won fame through his authorship he was a Union general during the Civil War.

 This exhibit was quite interesting.  As you can see from the title it invites you to look at the battle through the eyes of a child.

 This is the view you get from peering through the hole--much like a child huddled inside a building might have seen while peering out through a crack in the boards as the battle raged all around.

 After we left the visitor center and started touring the small battlefield our first stop gave a good overview of the start of the battle.

 And what would a battlefield be without a cannon?

The first site we visited was the Best Farm.

 We turned off the main road and drove down a long gravel road towards the farm buildings.  If I remember correctly the Park Service leases the land to local farmers so that they will continue to be used even while the buildings are preserved as part of the park.

 Once there we saw quite a few signs to explain the area.

 The buildings weren't open to visit, but we could walk around them and look at the area.

We next visited the Worthington Farm.

Unfortunately since the area was subject to some of the same flooding that had impacted Harpers Ferry the day before we didn't get to do any hiking by the river.

We made our final stop at the Thomas Farm where we couldn't approach the buildings.

However we were able to read the signs that described the final stages of the battle when the Union troops fell back and created a hole in their defenses that the Confederates would exploit to win the day.  However, the victory was hollow for, as described above, the battle had taken too much time and the Confederates no longer had a clear road to the capital.  They had to turn back once they saw DC and weren't able to cause any damage to the city.

The rest of the pictures that I took are in this album.

~Matt