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04-19-1861 - A Nightmare on Pratt Street

3/29/2016

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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.
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President Street Train Station
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Camden Street Train Station
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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"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.
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"First Blood - The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment Fighting Their Way Through Baltimore, April 19, 1861."
PictureMayor 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.
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Most train routes lead to Washington D.C. through Baltimore.
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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.
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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."
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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.

A video companion for this blog can be found here:
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Baltimore and Washington, Part One

3/15/2016

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Geology

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200 million years ago
Picture65 million years ago
200 million years ago, the American Continent split from Africa, giving birth to the North American eastern seaboard. Through water and wind erosion, many ancient rivers joined to the east to create the Chesapeake Bay. 65 million years ago, a six mile wide asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula, killing dinosaurs and vegetation and leaving a layer of ash that was heavy in iridium all over the world. The Chesapeake area was also affected by this impact as much of the plants and animals at that time died. By 30 million years ago, a two mile wide asteroid hit. This time it was in the Chesapeake area and hit at around 70,000-100,000 mph. The impact caused tsunamis, buried layers of sediment, and created fault lines.

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20 million years ago
Around this time, the Yorktown Sea begins, and the area of Baltimore was under water. Sea levels rose and fell about three times during the next few million years. By 18 thousand years ago, glaciers are covering North America, bringing the sea level down 400 ft. As the glaciers receded, the land was exposed and the melted water created Baltimore's main rivers.
Baltimore's main river, the Patapsco River, meets the water from the Johns Falls River and Inner Harbor at Whetstone Point before emptying into the Chesapeake Bay, making the area mostly marsh and woodlands, thick with clay and oysters.
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Map of the Patapsco River

Settlement

As far as we know, the first humans to inhabit the area of Baltimore were the Piscataway tribe, which was part of a larger culture called the Potomac Creek complex.
In 1608, Captain John Smith, the same one who helped found Jamestown, became the first European to explore the area. In it, he first described "a red bank of clay, flanking the natural harbor basin". The Piscataway chief granted the Europeans permission to settle on the land. Baltimore became part of the colony of Maryland in 1632 and Baltimore County was established in 1659.
Throughout the late 1600s and early 1700s, its local pioneers settled throughout the area and the town of Baltimore was established in 1729. It was around this time that much of the marshland was drained, and some of the monumental architecture was raised.
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In December 1773, in the heat of the American Revolution, the Second Continental Congress fled the makeshift Capital in Pennsylvania, and held secret sessions at Baltimore for a few months. To protect the harbor, a fort was built on Whetstone point. Before they knew it, the Declaration of Independence and Treaty of Paris had turned Maryland into a State.
The Revolutionary War wasn't cheap, and because the new Country was broke, many veterans of the war had not gotten paid. By 1783, Congress had to flee to New Jersey after groups of veterans seized Independence Hall. Having no jurisdiction in Pennsylvania, lead to Article One, Section 8, to be included in the new United States Constitution:
"To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of Particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards and other needful Buildings"
In 1788, word of the newly ratified Constitution had reached Baltimore, and some 4000 residents decided to throw a huge celebration that night on that "red bank of clay" described by John Smith, which was forever known afterwards as "Federal Hill".
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Federal Hill

Birth of a New Capital

About a hundred miles south of Baltimore, on the border between Maryland and Virginia is a marshy bank where the new Capital would lay. The location, across the Potomac from George Washington's home in Mt. Vernon, was chosen and in 1791, George Washington hired Peter Charles L'Enfant to plan out what would become the City of Washington, in the District of Columbia.
The problem was that L'Enfant got too attached to his work and alienated himself. Washington, as the first President of the United States, fired him and hired Andrew Ellicott to complete the job, which he did. 
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Original Plan for the city of Washington contains only two buildings. The Executive Mansion would be the building to the center left, and the Capitol Building would be the building to the center right.
In Washington, construction of the Presidential mansion began in 1792. On September of 1793, George Washington helped to lay the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol Building, which was located on top of what was then known as Jenkin's hill. The Executive mansion would end up costing $232,000 to complete and the Capital building would cost about $2,400,000. It would take years for both buildings to be built. In 1797, George Washington left the Presidency and John Adams took over.
Back in Baltimore, beginning in 1798, Fort Whetstone was redesigned, rebuilt, and renamed Fort McHenry, named after George Washington's last Secretary of War, and John Adam's first. Everything stops on December 14, 1799, because that day marks the death of George Washington at age 67. Baltimore continued to boom in trade and population and by 1800, it was one of the largest cities in America.
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Ft. McHenry
In Washington, November of 1800, both houses of Congress began meeting at the unfinished Capital Building. Meanwhile, John and Abigail Adams first moved into the Executive mansion. John wrote the following prayer to Abigail in a letter:
"I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this House, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof." (Sadly, not been the case)
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U.S. Capitol in 1800
On top of Jenkin's, now Capitol Hill, was supposed to be two buildings, wings which would later be joined together by a dome. The problem was that they didn't have enough people to complete both buildings in time, so they only focused on northern building, which would house the Senate, the Library of Congress and the  Supreme Court. Not having enough time or help to complete the southern building, they instead built a circular structure that they called the "Oven" for the House of Representatives. Funds for the building were allocated in 1803 and the Oven was torn down in 1804. Construction on the second wing was completed in 1811.
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U.S. Capitol in 1811
Thomas Jefferson occupied the President's house from 1801-1809 and thought that the place was too large. From 1803 - 1812, English sailors begin to impress U.S. Citizens into English Naval service. Beginning a new war over this issue, James Madison would inhabit the mansion from 1809 through the mansion's evacuation in 1814.
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Executive mansion in 1814
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March 10th, 2016

3/10/2016

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This is my last night in Baltimore. I had a great time here. Last time I was here during the summer. I gotta say, coming from San Diego, and now visiting during the winter, I must admit that Baltimore has some bi-polar weather. However, for the most part, I had  a great time! I was able to visit Federal Hill this time, which is beautiful, as well as Edgar Allen Poe's gravesite and home.
The highlights of this trip though, were when I left Baltimore and went to VERY special places. The crown achievement, as always, was when I visited my daughters in West Virginia. As I said in my previous entry, the trip was challenging because of my recent anxiety over driving. But it was worth it and if I'm lucky enough to return, you best believe I'll do it again.
My second highlight was when I visited Washington D.C. last weekend. I visited Ford's Theater, which included the Petersen House, and the Smithsonian of American History. Wonderful sites. I took all the pictures and video I could and learned a lot. I also went to my favorite wax museum to catch up with my Presidential buddies, lol!
I had fun here, but I'm ready to go back to San Diego. I miss the weather and my friends. It will be nice to return with these new life experiences. Get ready for more videos and blog entries that incorporate this trip. Thank you for the memories.

-F
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