Details the Monocacy National Battlefield in Frederick, Maryland, provided by the National Park Service. The site commemorates the battle of Monocacy of the U.S. Civil War. Discusses the facilities, programs, and activities.

The story of the fighting at Monocacy, known as the "Battle that Saved Washington." A pivotal day and an even more pivotal campaign that went right to the gates of Washington, D.C.

A richly detailed account of the hard-fought campaign that led to Antietam Creek and changed the course of the Civil War. In early September 1862 thousands of Union soldiers huddled within the defenses of Washington, disorganized and discouraged from their recent defeat at Second Manassas. Confederate General Robert E. Lee then led his tough and confident Army of Northern Virginia into Maryland in a bold gamble to force a showdown that could win Southern independence. The future of the Union hung in the balance. The campaign that followed lasted only two weeks, but it changed the course of the Civil War. D. Scott Hartwig delivers a riveting first installment of a two-volume study of the campaign and climactic battle. It takes the reader from the controversial return of George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac through the Confederate invasion, the siege and capture of Harpers Ferry, the daylong Battle of South Mountain, and, ultimately, to the eve of the great and terrible Battle of Antietam.

Early lost a crucial day in the heat and drought of mid-summer, a delay that perhaps cost the Confederacy a chance to change the course of history.