Existing comment:
Burning of the Bridge
12:00 noon July 9, 1864
Confederates wearing captured blue uniforms had killed or wounded several Union skirmishers who had been sent across the Monocacy River to hold the Georgetown Turnpike and B&O Railroad bridges "at all hazards."
The two sides traded shots all morning, but about noon Union Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace could see that the Confederates were about to overwhelm his troops. He ordered the wooden covered bridge set ablaze. Wallace had delayed the enemy, but he also had trapped his own men across the river.
Previously, men of the company had gathered sheaves of wheat from the nearby field, and had stacked them under the bridge's southeast corner. The combustibles were fired ...and the bridge was soon engulfed in flames.
-- Pvt. Alfred S. Roe, New York Heavy Artillery |