President Jefferson Davis also espoused that sentiment. "I have been asked," he said in a September 23, 1864, speech in Macon, Ga., "why the army sent to the Shenandoah Valley was not sent here? It was because an army of the enemy had penetrated the Valley to the very gates of Lynchburg and General Early was sent to drive them back."

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Civil War Times magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Early "not only successfully did," Davis said, "but, crossing the Potomac, came well-nigh capturing Washington itself, and forced Grant to send two corps of his army to protect it." The Confederate president noted that the enemy had called that action a raid. "If so, Sherman's march into Georgia is a raid," Davis said.

Davis believed that Early's success against Hunter in the Valley, Grant being forced to send troops to Washington, and Early's move back into the Valley staved off the fall of Richmond in the summer of 1864. "What would prevent them now," he said, "if Early was withdrawn, penetrating down the valley and putting a complete cordon of men around Richmond?"

Washington Saved, Wallace Redeemed

Although Grant, with Halleck's endorsement, demoted Wallace after the defeat at Monocacy, the Union Army's commanding general quickly swung 180 degrees in his opinion of Wallace's performance. At Grant's urging—and presumably against Halleck's wishes—Secretary of War Edwin Stanton moved to reinstate Wallace on July 28, 1864, as the commander of the Middle Department.

In his official report written a year later, Grant said that Wallace, with "a force not sufficient to ensure success" at Monocacy, 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 Six Corps, and the advance of the Nineteenth Corps."

Grant expanded on his praise for Wallace in his memoir, which he wrote in the early 1880s: "Whether the delay caused by the battle [of Monocacy] amounted to a day or not, General Wallace contributed on this occasion, by the defeat of the troops under him a great benefit to the cause that often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force to render by means of a victory." Most historians can agree on the fact that the Battle of Monocacy—the only clear-cut Confederate victory north of the Mason-Dixon Line—did ultimately save Washington from Early's men.

Changing the Course of the War?

The broader question remains though: Did Monocacy and Early's subsequent move on the nation's capital change the course of the Civil War? Adding up all the evidence, a strong case can be made that Wallace's stand and Early's rebuff at Washington did just that.

For one thing, delaying Early and preventing him from invading Washington on July 10 when the city was ripe for the taking certainly had an impact—albeit a temporary one—on the contentious 1864 presidential election. "Many in the North saw [Early's] raid as evidence of northern military mismanagement and the impossibility of ever winning the war," eminent Civil War historian James McPherson wrote. "It gave a boost to the hopes of northern Peace Democrats—the Copperheads—to gain control of the party and defeat Lincoln's re-election."

According to another noted Civil War historian, Gary Gallagher, "Had Wallace failed to intercept Early, [his] Army of the Valley might have fought its way to Washington on July 10." No one can say exactly what would have happened next, but as Gallagher put it, "it can be said with confidence that Wallace's troops spared the Lincoln government a potential disaster, and for that reason the battle of the Monocacy must be considered one of the more significant actions of the Civil War."

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to