April 19, 1861, 10:30 am; The Inner Harbor, Baltimore, Maryland
Five days after the fall of Fort Sumter to confederate troops, a massive crowd was beginning to gather at the President Street train station in Baltimore as a train carrying about seven hundred men from Massachusetts pulled up. These men were part of seventy five thousand volunteers called to action by President Lincoln in response to the surrender at Fort Sumter. The troops were heading to Washington D.C. to protect the city, but Baltimore’s laws prohibited trains from traveling through the city. In order to reach D.C., the troops would have to detach the cars from the train and pull each car by horse westward on Pratt Street to the next train station on Camden Street, about ten blocks down.
President Street Train Station
Camden Street Train Station
Travelers had to de-board a train, cross the city by foot or by horse and check into another train station on the other side.
There was just one problem though. Though Maryland was a Union state, the residents of Baltimore were either anti-war, or very sympathetic to the Confederate cause. They thought of the call for troops as a threat of invasion. Just a month before, President Lincoln had to quietly cross through the city in the middle of the night on his way to his own inauguration because threats of assassination had already been floating among the residents. The day before on the 18th, four hundred and sixty volunteers from Pennsylvania arrived, while a crowd of several hundred Confederate sympathizers met at Baltimore's Washington Monument and attempted to harass the troops as they marched to Camden Street. However, they were able to successfully pass through the city, arriving at Washington D.C. that evening.
While traveling through Baltimore on his way to Washington, Abraham Lincoln's bodyguard offered Lincoln brass knuckles, a knife and "artillery goggles". Lincoln declined.
The crowd that had gathered this day however was very hostile. The commander of the traveling unit, Colonel Edward F. Jones, learned that there would be Confederate sympathizers ready to resist their crossing. They had transferred all but the last two cars and were in the process of pulling those cars by horse, when they reached Gay Street; the crowd began blocking the tracks with wooden timbers, metal anchors even dumping sand onto the tracks. The officers in the regiment managed to get the car back on the tracks and attempted to continue. The road in this area was going through repairs and so piles of paving stones were lying around. These stones found their way through the windows of these cars.
The driver of one of the cars freaked out, unhitched his horse and tried to escape the barrage, but was brought back by force. As the cars sat there, full of troops who were lying on the floor for cover, the crowd began taunting them, yelling obscenities, and cheering for Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Unable to complete the transfer, once the horse was re-hitched, the two cars returned to the President Street Train Station. The troops would now have to march to Camden Street. Jones went through both railroad cars and warned his men of what to expect:
"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."
The troops unloaded their gear among jeering crowds and attempted to march in formation up President Street. This had no effect on the mob that then began surrounding the troops. A man with the rebel flag went ahead of the troops and waved the banner around as he pretended to lead the troops while others followed holding rocks and paving stones. By the time they turned on Pratt Street and reached the Jones Fall Bridge, the mob had completely blocked the path and were breaking windows and throwing paving stones at the troops. A soldier was hit by a stone so hard; he fell to the feet of a port customs officer named Edward W. Beatty, dropping his musket. Beatty picked up the musket and fired at the troops.
"The Uprising At The North"
Frightened, officers ordered the troops to open fire. They began to shoot into the mob and a huge fight soon broke out. Beatty quickly turned to the crowd and asked for a cartridge, got one and was quickly shown how to reload the musket. Pistols appeared among the crowd and a gun fight ensued. Small plumes of brick fragments jumped out from nearby buildings after being stuck. Minnie balls cracked through skulls and brain matter scattered, they tore through fingers, abdomens and bowels, leaving trails of chunky crimson on the street.
"Civil War's first blood shed in Baltimore"
Meanwhile, 20 year old William Clark, a confederate sympathizer, was killed. Robert W. Davis Esq. was shot on the side and died soon after. Corporal Sumner H. Needham was hit in the head with a stone and died. It soon became so overwhelming that the troops abandoned their formations and hauled ass to Camden Street, reloading their muskets as they ran, but otherwise leaving much of their gear behind. The wounded soldiers left behind begged the mob to spare their lives. A total of four soldiers and eleven civilians were killed in the incident.
"First Blood - The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment Fighting Their Way Through Baltimore, April 19, 1861."
Mayor George William Brown Baltimore Mayor George William Brown learned of the riot and made a bee-line to Camden Street. As he saw the crowd approach, he tried desperately to quell the riot, but was unable to. Finally, he picked up a dropped musket and kept the crowds back by force. Baltimore Police soon arrived and helped the troops get to the train station, blocking the rioters at gunpoint until the regiment was able to leave on the train. Even as the train began to pull out, residents continued to try and block the tracks with obstacles, which the police were quick to remove.
Now angry over the death of civilians by Union troops, the mob then attacked a German speaking newspaper office sympathetic to the Union, wrecking the place and forcing their publisher and their editor to leave the city. Bodies from both sides of the fight were brought to the central police station. The body of Robert W. Davis, wearing the same clothes he wore when he was shot, was brought back to the station for a viewing. A few short hours after the initial riot, another train of troops, this time with about five hundred soldiers from Pennsylvania, arrived at the President Street Station. Baltimore Police were still at the Camden Station, and so without police presence, the mob once again began attacking the cars. This time, the soldiers, many of them in civilian clothes, were ready for a brawl and came out fighting hand to hand. Already dealing with enough violence for one day, the troops were ordered back into the cars and the train was returned to Pennsylvania. Some stragglers who missed the train were forced to walk back.
Many Confederate sympathizers would attempt to compare the Pratt Street riot to the Boston massacre. In a way, this was true, since the Boston massacre was triggered when Boston colonists harassed British troops into firing upon them. Though in both cases, the fact that the troops had been compelled to fire on the crowds was mostly ignored, and for the next month after the riot, there would be hostilities between Baltimore's citizens and police.
James Ryder Randall wasn’t at the riot, but when he heard that his friend, Francis X. Ward, was shot in the groin and killed during the riot, he wrote a poem which was published on April 26th. The poem would go on to become a Confederate hymn, and later, the official state song of Maryland. Here are three of the nine verses:
“The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland, my Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland, my Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain-
"Sic semper!" 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back amain,
Maryland! My Maryland!
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland, my Maryland!
The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland, my Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!”
In response to the riot, Lincoln declared Marshall Law on the state of Maryland on April 27th. Union troops were sent to Baltimore, specifically Ft. McHenry and Federal Hill in order to keep Maryland in the Union by force. On Federal Hill, earthworks were built and cannons were mounted, pointing towards the city. Responding to Marshall Law, the Maryland Legislature took up the idea of secession on the 29th, but voted to stay in the Union. They did agree that the hostilities in the state stemmed from the transfer of troops through the state. Maryland's Governor, Thomas Holliday Hicks, asked President Lincoln not to send any more troops through Maryland in order to avoid any more bloodshed, but if you know where D.C. is located, it's easy to understand why Lincoln declined.
Most train routes lead to Washington D.C. through Baltimore.
Train routes to Washington D.C.
In response to Lincoln's refusal to stop sending troops through the state, Governor Hicks sent a militia to destroy railroad tracks and bridges to stop the flow of troops. Responding to that, on May 25th, Lincoln had one of the Maryland militia leaders involved arrested and imprisoned at Fort Mc Henry without charges, thus effectively suspending the writ of habeas corpus. This arrest was a huge deal. The case was taken up by a federal judge who on June 1st, ruled that only Congress, and not the President could suspend the writ of habeas corpus. However, Congress was on recess and so Lincoln simply ignored the order. His suspension of habeas corpus was later made legal by Congress once it was back in session.
General Order 141, September 25, 1862
Other prominent Marylanders would also be arrested and imprisoned, including U.S. Representative Henry May - a Democrat, and in tragic irony, a newspaper editor named Frank Key Howard, was also arrested and imprisoned at the fort for criticizing Lincoln in an editorial. Howard was the grandson of Francis Scott Key, who had witnessed the bombardment of Fort Mc Henry back in 1814 and wrote a poem about it which would later become the U.S. national anthem. Howard had this to say about his own imprisonment:
"When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd and not pleasant coincidence. On that day forty-seven years before my grandfather, Mr. Francis Scott Key, then prisoner on a British ship, had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When on the following morning the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, the Star Spangled Banner. As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed."
Fort McHenry
By the time of the Pratt Street riot, Lincoln had only been in office for about a month and already Lincoln's authority had been heavily challenged by state secession, the riot, and the surrender of Fort Sumter. In order to maintain authority and keep the Union intact, Lincoln began to resort to extreme legal measures which, though ultimately successful, fueled more anger from Confederates and Confederate sympathizers. At the same time, the multiple arrests and deployment of troops kept Maryland in the Union. It was only going to get worse from here though, for the state of Virginia, literally across the Potomac River on the border of Washington D.C. was pretty damn close to leaving the Union as well. Lincoln decided to deal with this issue differently though.
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