After these events comparative quiet reigned about Petersburg until late in July.  The time, however, was spent in strengthening the intrenchments and making our position generally more secure against a sudden attack.  In the meantime I had to look after other portions of my command, where things had not been going on so favorably, always, as I could have wished.

General Hunter who had been appointed to succeed Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley immediately took up the offensive.  He met the enemy on the 5th of June at Piedmont, and defeated him.  On the 8th he formed a junction with Crook and Averell at Staunton, from which place he moved direct on Lynchburg, via Lexington, which he reached and invested on the 16th.  Up to this time he was very successful; and but for the difficulty of taking with him sufficient ordnance stores over so long a march, through a hostile country, he would, no doubt, have captured Lynchburg.  The destruction of the enemy’s supplies and manufactories had been very great.  To meet this movement under General Hunter, General Lee sent Early with his corps, a part of which reached Lynchburg before Hunter.  After some skirmishing on the 17th and 18th, General Hunter, owing to a want of ammunition to give battle, retired from before the place.  Unfortunately, this want of ammunition left him no choice of route for his return but by the way of the Gauley and Kanawha rivers, thence up the Ohio River, returning to Harper’s Ferry by way of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  A long time was consumed in making this movement.  Meantime the valley was left open to Early’s troops, and others in that quarter; and Washington also was uncovered.  Early took advantage of this condition of affairs and moved on Washington.

In the absence of Hunter, General Lew Wallace, with headquarters at Baltimore, commanded the department in which the Shenandoah lay.  His surplus of troops with which to move against the enemy was small in number.  Most of these were raw and, consequently, very much inferior to our veterans and to the veterans which Early had with him; but the situation of Washington was precarious, and Wallace moved with commendable promptitude to meet the enemy at the Monocacy.  He could hardly have expected to defeat him badly, but he hoped to cripple and delay him until Washington could be put into a state of preparation for his reception.  I had previously ordered General Meade to send a division to Baltimore for the purpose of adding to the defences of Washington, and he had sent Ricketts’s division of the 6th corps (Wright’s), which arrived in Baltimore on the 8th of July.  Finding that Wallace had gone to the front with his command, Ricketts immediately took the cars and followed him to the Monocacy with his entire division.  They met the enemy and, as might have been expected, were defeated; but they succeeded in stopping him for the day on which the battle took place.  The next morning Early started on his march to the capital of the Nation, arriving before it on the 11th.