Warren D. Wenger, retired missionary and Civil War buff, has written a second small book about a second local battle that had a profound effect on the outcome of the War Between the States.
In both stories, a delay tipped the course of history.
Wenger's newest book, "Monocacy: The Defeat that Saved Washington, D.C.," recounts the military significance of a battle that was lost -- but delayed a Confederate assault on the virtually defenseless capital.
Wenger, 75, became interested in the Civil War about six years ago, he said. He settled in Westminster in 1986 after a career that included 18 years as a Moravian minister in war-torn Nicaragua and Honduras, and at various parishes in the eastern United States.
His first book on the Civil War, "Western Maryland: Springboard of the Union Army to Gettysburg," told how Confederate Gen. J. E. B. "Jeb" Stuart, commander of the cavalry corps, was delayed in Carroll County, which helped to determine the site of the war's most famous battle.
Gen. George G. Meade planned to fight along Pipe Creek, while Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee wanted to engage at Harrisburg, hoping to win support from Britain and France if he captured the Pennsylvania capital. Instead, they met at Gettysburg -- the turning point of the Civil War.
Wenger's second book is a 24-page account of the July 9, 1864, engagement a few miles south of Frederick along a six-mile stretch of the Monocacy River, with maps and photographs of the leaders on both sides.
Foremost among these are Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Anderson Early and Union Maj. Gen. Lewis Wallace, better known later as the author of "Ben Hur."
Wallace was in Baltimore -- the result of another fateful delay, which had occurred two years earlier when he took a wrong turn and arrived late for the battle of Shiloh. As punishment, he was relegated to training green recruits in Baltimore, where he heard rumors that Early was marching up the Shenandoah Valley. Wallace ordered several thousand men, including 2,700 of his green soldiers, to Frederick, and accurately anticipated the thrust of Early's attack at a point near the Monocacy Junction railroad station and a covered wooden bridge along Georgetown Pike to Washington.
The Union forces suffered 677 casualties, with 623 missing, wounded or captured, Wenger said. Early won the battle, with about 700 killed or wounded, and about 600 missing.
But Monocacy had kept Early occupied for a day, giving U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant time to move seasoned troops into Washington. The capital's forces had been depleted by Grant's aggressive campaign with Philip Sheridan in Virginia.
Without time to bring in these reinforcements, historians say the capital might have fallen to the Confederacy, so Monocacy is often called "the battle that saved Washington."
Wenger agrees: "Due to the battle of Monocacy, Early lost a day's march on Washington D.C., which if he had not lost that day, he might have been able to capture."
Wallace had a memorial placed at the battlefield honoring the fallen Union men, which read: "These men died to save the national capital, and they did save it."
Wenger also includes Grant's assessment: "If Early had been but one day earlier, he might have entered the capital before the arrival of the reinforcement I had sent. General Wallace contributed on this occasion, by the defeat of the troops under him, a greater benefit to the cause than often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force to render by means of a victory."
Wenger became intrigued by the battle several years ago when he and his wife visited the National Park Service's Monocacy National Battlefield, which opened near Frederick in 1991.
But he could find few books about the battle's significance, he said, and "I thought it would be interesting to write a kind of summary of the whole story."
He relied heavily upon B. Franklin Cooling's work, "Jubal Early's Raid on Washington, 1864," and received help from Cooling. Wenger wrote most of his book in 1994 and had help from his daughter, Rebecca Wenger Bennett of Bridgeton, N.J., to publish it.
The book will be available at bookstores in Westminster and Frederick, and, Wenger hopes, at the Gettysburg and Monocacy visitor centers.
A native of Ohio, Wenger received his master of divinity degree from Moravian Theological Seminary in 1945. From 1946 to 1961, he was a Moravian missionary to the Creole, Miskito and Sumu people on Nicaragua's east coast. He earned additional master's degrees in theology and in religion in 1951 and 1970.
From 1976 to 1979, Wenger served as director of Moravian Bible Institute and Seminary in Bilwaskarma, Nicaragua, and in Brus Laguna, Honduras. He left when the fighting there moved to within a few miles of the school, he said, but maintains correspondence with friends in the large Moravian community there. Wenger has written books about his missionary work, using his jungle diaries, and about his church. The Moravian Church, the world's oldest Protestant denomination, was founded in 1457 in what later became Czechoslovakia, he said, and in America in the 1700s. It has had a large presence in Central America since before the Civil War.
Pub Date: 1/20/97
