Confederates wearing captured blue uniforms killed or wounded several Union skirmishers 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 saw that the Confederates were about to overwhelm his troops and ordered the wooden covered bridge burned. Although Wallace had delayed the enemy, he also trapped his own men across the river. Men of the company had earlier gathered sheaves of wheat from a nearby field and stacked them under the bridge's southeast corner, and these combustibles were set on fire until the bridge was engulfed in flames.