Baltimore riot of 1861
Baltimore riot of 1861 | |||||||
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Part of the American Civil War | |||||||
"Massachusetts Militia Passing Through Baltimore", an 1861 engraving of the Baltimore Civil War riots | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
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Pro-Southern/Confederate Maryland sympathizers
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Col. Edward F. Jones | None | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
5 (soldiers) killed, 36 wounded | 12 (civilians) killed, unknown hundreds wounded |
The Baltimore riot of 1861 (also called the "Pratt Street Riots" and the "Pratt Street Massacre") was a civil conflict on Friday, April 19, 1861, on Pratt Street, in Baltimore, Maryland. It occurred between antiwar "Copperhead" Democrats (the largest party in Maryland) and other Southern/Confederate sympathizers on one side, and on the other, members of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania state militia regiments en route to the national capital at Washington who had been called up for federal service. The fighting began at the President Street Station, spreading throughout President Street and subsequently to Howard Street, where it ended at the Camden Street Station. The riot produced the first deaths of Union volunteers by hostile action, although caused by civilians, in the American Civil War. Civilians among the attackers also were killed.
Background
In 1861, many Baltimoreans did not support a violent conflict with their southern neighbors and some of them strongly sympathized with the Southern cause. Historian David J. Eicher described Baltimore in 1861 as "the largely pro-Southern city of Baltimore".[1][2] In the previous year's presidential election, Abraham Lincoln had received only 1,100 of more than 30,000 votes cast in the city.[3] Lincoln's opponents were infuriated (and supporters disappointed) when the president-elect, fearing an infamous rumored assassination plot, traveled secretly through the city in the middle of the night on a different railroad protected by a few aides and detectives including the soon-to-be famous Allan Pinkerton in February en route to his inauguration (then constitutionally scheduled for March 4) in Washington, D.C. The city was also home to the country's largest population (25,000) of free African Americans, as well as many white abolitionists and supporters of the Union.[4] As the war began, the city's divided loyalties created tension.[5] Supporters of secession and slavery organized themselves into a force called "National Volunteers" while Unionists and abolitionists called themselves "Minute Men".[6]
The conflict at Fort Sumter had occurred on April 12–13, one week before the riot. At the time,
Virginia's secession was particularly significant due to the state's industrial capacity. Sympathetic Marylanders, who had supported secession ever since John C. Calhoun spoke of nullification, agitated to join Virginia in leaving the Union. Their discontent increased in the days afterward when Lincoln put out a call for volunteers to serve 90 days and end the insurrection.[7]
New militia units from several Northern states were starting to move south, particularly to protect Washington, D.C., from the new Confederate threat in Virginia. Baltimore's newly elected reform mayor, George William Brown, and the new police marshal (chief), George Proctor Kane, anticipated trouble and began efforts to placate the city's population.[8]
On Thursday, April 18, 460 newly mustered Pennsylvania state
April 19, 1861
On April 17, the
Sometime after leaving Philadelphia, the unit's colonel, Edward F. Jones, received information that passage through Baltimore "would be resisted".[13] According to his later report, Jones went through the railroad cars and gave this order:
The regiment will march through Baltimore in column of sections, arms at will. You will undoubtedly be insulted, abused, and, perhaps, assaulted, to which you must pay no attention whatever, but march with your faces to the front, and pay no attention to the mob, even if they throw stones, bricks, or other missiles; but if you are fired upon and any one of you is hit, your officers will order you to fire. Do not fire into any promiscuous crowds, but select, any man whom you may see aiming at you, and be sure you drop him.[14]
Indeed, as the militia regiment transferred between stations, a mob of anti-war supporters and Southern sympathizers attacked the train cars and blocked the route. When it became apparent that they could not travel by horse-drawn railroad cars over the connecting track between the stations, the four companies, about 240 soldiers, got out of the cars and marched in formation through the city. However, the mob followed the soldiers, causing damage and placing obstructions until they finally blocked the soldiers.
Five soldiers (Corporal Sumner Henry Needham of Company I and privates Luther C. Ladd, Charles Taylor, Addison Whitney and Sergeant John Ames of Company D)[18][19] were killed or mortally wounded in the riot.[20] About 36 men of the regiment were also wounded; many were left behind.[21] At least twelve civilians also were killed. It is unknown how many additional civilians were injured.[22][23] Luther C. Ladd is often referred to as the first Union soldier killed in action during the American Civil War.[24][25][26][27]
The same day, after the attack on the soldiers, the office of the
As a result of the riot in Baltimore and pro-Southern sympathies of some of the city's populace, the Baltimore Steam Packet Company also declined the same day a Federal government request to transport Union forces to relieve the beleaguered Union naval yard facility at Portsmouth, Virginia.[30]
Aftermath
In Brown's later assessment, it was the Baltimore riot that pushed the two sides over the edge into full-scale war, "because then was shed the first blood in a conflict between the North and the South; then a step was taken which made compromise or retreat almost impossible; then passions on both sides were aroused which could not be controlled".[31]
On July 10, 1861, a grand jury of the United States District Court indicted Samuel Mactier, Lewis Bitter, James McCartney, Philip Casmire, Michael Hooper and Richard H. Mitchell for their part in the riot.[32]
After the April 19 riot, some small skirmishes occurred throughout Baltimore between citizens and police for the next month, but a sense of normalcy returned as the city was cleaned up. Mayor Brown and Maryland Governor Hicks implored President Lincoln to send no further troops through Maryland to avoid further confrontations. However, as Lincoln remarked to a peace delegation from the Young Men's Christian Association, Union soldiers were "neither birds to fly over Maryland, nor moles to burrow under it".[33] On the evening of April 20 Hicks also authorized Brown to dispatch the Maryland state militia for the purpose of disabling the railroad bridges into the city—an act he would later deny. One of the militia leaders was John Merryman, who was arrested one month later, and held in defiance of a writ of habeas corpus, which led to the case of Ex parte Merryman.[34]
On April 19, Major General
The 8th Massachusetts, with the
There were calls for Maryland to declare secession in the wake of the riot. Governor Hicks called a special session of the state legislature to consider the situation. Since Annapolis, the capital, was occupied by Federal troops, and Baltimore was harboring many pro-Confederate mobs, Hicks directed the legislature to meet in Frederick, in the predominantly Unionist western part of the state. The legislature met on April 26; on April 29, it voted 53–13 against secession,[37][38] though it also voted not to reopen rail links with the North, and requested that Lincoln remove the growing numbers of federal troops in Maryland.[39] At this time the legislature seems to have wanted to maintain Maryland's neutrality in the conflict.[39]
Many more Union troops arrived. On May 13, Butler sent Union troops into Baltimore and declared
A man supposed to be a Maryland State Militia soldier was detained in Fort McHenry, and Judge Giles, in Baltimore, issued a writ of habeas corpus, but Major W. W. Morris, commander of the fort, wrote back, "At the date of issuing your writ, and for two weeks previous, the city which you live, and where your court has been held, was entirely under the control of revolutionary authorities. Within that period United States soldiers, while committing no offense, had been perfidiously attacked and inhumanly murdered in your streets; no punishment had been awarded, and, I believe, no arrests had been made for these crimes; supplies of provisions intended for this garrison has been stopped; the intention to capture this fort had been boldly proclaimed; your most public thoroughfares were daily patrolled by large numbers of troops, armed and clothed, at least in part, with articles stolen from the United States; and the Federal flag, while waving over the Federal offices, was cut down by some person wearing the uniform of a Maryland soldier. To add the foregoing, an assembly elected in defiance of law, but claiming to be the legislative body of your State, and so recognized by the Executive of Maryland, was debating the Federal compact. If all this be not rebellion, I know not what to call it. I certainly regard it as sufficient legal cause for suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus." Moreover, Morris wrote, "If, in an experience of thirty-three years, you have never before known the writ to be disobeyed, it is only because such a contingency in political affairs as the present has never before arisen."[42]
Just before daybreak on June 27, soldiers marched from Fort McHenry on orders from Major General
Major General
Some Southerners reacted with passion to the incident. James Ryder Randall, a teacher in Louisiana but a native Marylander who had lost a friend in the riots, wrote "Maryland, My Maryland" for the Southern cause in response to the riots.[46] The poem was later set to "Lauriger Horatius" (the tune of O Tannenbaum), a melody popular in the South, and referred to the riots with lines such as "Avenge the patriotic gore / That flecked the streets of Baltimore". It was not until seventy-eight years later (1939) that it became Maryland's state song.[47] After many efforts to revoke this status,[48][49] it was removed from being the state song in 2021.[50]
On September 17, 1861, the day the legislature reconvened to discuss these later events and Lincoln's possibly unconstitutional actions, twenty-seven state legislators (one-third of the Maryland General Assembly) were arrested and jailed by federal troops, using Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, and in further defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice's ex parte Merryman ruling.[51][39] As a result, the legislative session was canceled.[39] A new legislature was elected in November 1861.[52]
See also
- Baltimore Plot
- Baltimore railroad strike of 1877
- Baltimore Know-Nothing riots of 1856
- George H. Steuart (militia general)
- Henry Stump
- List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States
- New York City draft riots
- Edwin Bennett (businessman, conflict occurred in front of his house)
Notes
- ISBN 978-0-684-84944-7. p. 54.
- ISBN 978-0-19-503863-7. p. 285, McPherson wrote: "But the loyalty of Baltimore with a third of the state's population, was suspect."
- ^ "Baltimore: A House Divided & War on the Chesapeake Bay". CivilWarTraveler.com. January 13, 2008. Archived from the original on June 27, 2012. Retrieved July 14, 2012.
- ^ Ezratty, Baltimore in the Civil War (2010), p. 31.
- ^ Ezratty, Baltimore in the Civil War (2010), p. 31. "Baltimore's citizens were politically and emotionally divided between pro- and anti-South and slavery. There were clashes as passions ran high about these issues and the right of a state to secede from the Union."
- ^ ISBN 9780393047585.
- ISBN 978-0-15-603064-9. p. 75.
- ^ Ezratty, Baltimore in the Civil War (2010), pp. 43–45.
- ISBN 0-671-43414-4.
- ^ Ezratty, Baltimore in the Civil War (2010), p. 45.
- ^ The first connection was created with the opening of the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel in 1873.
- ^ Ezratty, Baltimore in the Civil War (2010), p. 47. "...the thirty-year-old ordinance forbidding the operation of steam engines in the city obliged the Union troops on both the eighteenth and nineteenth to transfer from their terminating depots on their way to Camden Station, where trains to Washington awaited them. The forced transfer made the soldiers of the Sixth Massachusetts vulnerable as, unlike the Pennsylvanians a day earlier, they had to stop and wait while horsecars hitched up and then rolled over Pratt Street's rails to Camden Station."
- ^ Jones' report also notes that during their travel, a James Brady was "taken insane" and left in Delanco Township, New Jersey, with J. C. Buck.
- ^ United States. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1. Edited by John Sheldon Moody, et al. Vol. 2. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880, p. 7.
- ISBN 978-0-15-603064-9. pp. 115–1189.
- ISBN 0-19-516895-X.
- ISBN 978-0-15-603064-9. pp. 120–121.
- ISBN 978-0-15-603064-9. p. 119.
- ^ Phillip Fazzini. "Luther C. Ladd". Photos from the Past. Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. Archived from the original on February 10, 2008. Retrieved February 6, 2008.
- ISBN 978-0-684-84944-7, p. 54. McPherson, p. 285, wrote that by the time the 6th Massachusetts "had fought their way to the station, and entrained for Washington, four soldiers and twelve Baltimoreans lay dead and several score groaned with wounds." Detzer appears to have added Sergeant John Ames to the usual list of names. Corporal Needham, who was mortally wounded, died 8 days later.
- ISBN 978-0-393-04758-5, p. 174.
- ^ James Ford Rhodes (1917). History of the Civil War, 1861–1865. The Macmillan Company, New York. p. 19.
6th Massachusetts Regiment and Baltimore Riot.
- ^ Browne, p. 173, wrote that there were "over a hundred wounded".
- ^ Kimball, Charles A. (June 1, 1861). ""Luther C. Ladd...The First Victim of the War"". Harpers Weekly. p. 341. Retrieved June 13, 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-15-603064-9.
- ^ *Thorp, Gene (April 19, 2011). "First Civil War Deaths Took Place in Baltimore". Washington Post. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-15-603064-9, p. 119. As noted in previous footnotes, Detzer and other sources identify Luther C. Ladd as the first soldier killed by hostile action in the war.
- J. Thomas Scharf (1874). The chronicles of Baltimore. Turnbull Brothers, Baltimore. p. 104.
- ^ Albert B. Faust (1963). "Rapp, Wilhelm". Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. VIII, Part 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 384–385.
- LCCN 61012580.
- ^ Brown, Baltimore and the 19th of April 19, 1861 (1887), p. 10
- ^ The New York Times. "The Baltimore Treason.; The Indictment Against John Merryman." July 12, 1861.
- ^ Benson John Lossing (1866/1997), Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War, reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, Vol. I, Chap. XVII, "Events in or near the National Capital", pp. 419–420.
- ^ "Burning the Bridges". Straddling Secession: Thomas Holliday Hicks and the Beginning of the Civil War in Maryland. Maryland State Archives. Retrieved January 3, 2015.
Merryman appealed to Roger B. Taney, ... who issued a landmark opinion saying that only Congress could suspend the right of habeas corpus.
- ^ Benson John Lossing (1866/1997), Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War, reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, Vol. I, Chap. XVIII, "The Capital Secured – Maryland Secessionists Subdued – Contributions by the People", pp. 434–436, [italics in reprint].
- ^ Benson John Lossing (1866/1997), Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War, reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, Vol. I, Chap. XVIII, "The Capital Secured – Maryland Secessionists Subdued – Contributions by the People", pp. 439–440.
- ^ Mitchell, p. 87
- ^ "States Which Seceded". eHistory.com. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
- ^ a b c d Maryland State Archives (1998). "The General Assembly Moves to Frederick, 1861". Maryland State Archives. Retrieved May 21, 2023.
- ^ a b Schoettler, Carl (November 27, 2001). "A time liberties weren't priority". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved October 17, 2014.
- ^ a b c Howard, F. K. (Frank Key) (1863). Fourteen Months in American Bastiles. London: H.F. Mackintosh. Retrieved August 18, 2014.
- ^ Benson John Lossing (1866/1997), Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War, reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, Vol. I, Chap. XVIII, "The Capital Secured – Maryland Secessionists Subdued – Contributions by the People", pp. 449–450, [italics in reprint].
- ^ Benson John Lossing (1866/1997), Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War, reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, Chap. XXIII, "The War in Missouri – Doings of the Confederate 'Congress' – Affairs in Baltimore – Piracies", pp. 551–553.
- ^ Benson John Lossing (1866/1997), Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War, reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, Vol. I, Chap. XXIII, "War in Missouri – Doings of the Confederate 'Congress' – Affairs in Baltimore – Piracies", pp. 553–554.
- ^ Melchior, Louis (April 30, 1925). "Early fortifications in Baltimore Harbor". University of Maryland. Retrieved March 30, 2019.
- ^ Phair, Monty. "A Brief History of Randallstown". Baltimore County Public Libraries. Archived from the original on February 12, 2009. Retrieved July 27, 2009.
- ^ Maryland State Archives (2004). Maryland State Song – "Maryland, My Maryland" Archived January 4, 2006, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 27, 2004.
- ^ "Another Try for Maryland's State Song?". The Washington Post. April 6, 2000.
- ^ Helderman, Rosalind S. (March 1, 2009). "O Controversy!". The Washington Post. p. C01. Retrieved January 3, 2015.
- ^ Bass, Randi (June 10, 2021), "Maryland officially repeals state song", WDVM-TV, retrieved May 18, 2021
- ^ William C. Harris, Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (University Press of Kansas, 2011) p. 71
- ^ McPherson, p. 289.
Bibliography
- Detzer, David. Dissonance: The Turbulent Days Between Fort Sumter and Bull Run. New York: Harcourt, 2006. ISBN 978-0-15-603064-9.
- Harry Ezratty, Baltimore in the Civil War: The Pratt Street Riot and a City Occupied, Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-60949-003-4.
- George William Brown, Baltimore And The Nineteenth Of April, 1861: A Study Of The War, Baltimore: N. Murray (Johns Hopkins University), 1887.
External links
- Baltimore Riot Trail Death at President Street Station Historical Marker Database
- Church Home and Hospital Historical Marker Database
- Newspaper article presenting eyewitness account of the Baltimore Riot
- Pratt Street Riot collection at the University of Maryland Libraries