Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War. George W. Brown
contributed $10,000 a year to its support. This amount was increased by the contributions of individuals. The board, of which Mr. John H. B. Latrobe was for many years president, was composed of our best citizens. A code of laws for the government of the colony was prepared by the excellent and learned lawyer, Hugh Davey Evans.
While there was on the part of a large portion of the people a deep-rooted and growing dislike to slavery, agitation on the subject had not commenced. It was in fact suppressed by reason of the violence of Northern abolitionists with whom the friends of emancipation were not able to unite.
It is not surprising that Maryland was in no mood for war, but that her voice was for compromise and peace – compromise and peace at any price consistent with honor.
The period immediately following the election of Mr. Lincoln in November, 1860, was throughout the country one of intense agitation and of important events. A large party at the North preferred compromise to war, even at the cost of dissolution of the Union. If dissolution began, no one could tell where it would stop. South Carolina seceded on the 17th of December, 1860. Georgia and the five Gulf States soon followed. On the 6th of January, 1861, Fernando Wood, mayor of the city of New York, sent a message to the common council advising that New York should secede and become a free city.5
On February the 9th, Jefferson Davis was elected President of the Southern Confederacy, a Confederacy to which other States would perhaps soon be added. But the Border States were as yet debatable ground; they might be retained by conciliation and compromise or alienated by hostile measures, whether directed against them or against the seceded States. In Virginia a convention had been called to consider the momentous question of union or secession, and an overwhelming majority of the delegates chosen were in favor of remaining in the Union. Other States were watching Virginia's course, in order to decide whether to stay in the Union or go out of it with her.
On the 12th and 13th of April occurred the memorable bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter. On the 15th of April, President Lincoln issued his celebrated proclamation calling out seventy-five thousand militia, and appealing "to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity and existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured." What these wrongs were is not stated. "The first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth," said the proclamation, "will probably be to re-possess the forts, places and property which have been seized from the Union." On the same day there was issued from the War Department a request addressed to the Governors of the different States, announcing what the quota of each State would be, and that the troops were to serve for three months unless sooner discharged. Maryland's quota was four regiments.
The proclamation was received with exultation at the North – many dissentient voices being silenced in the general acclaim – with defiance at the South, and in Maryland with mingled feelings in which astonishment, dismay and disapprobation were predominant. On all sides it was agreed that the result must be war, or a dissolution of the Union, and I may safely say that a large majority of our people then preferred the latter.
An immediate effect of the proclamation was to intensify the feeling of hostility in the wavering States, and to drive four of them into secession. Virginia acted promptly. On April 17th her convention passed an ordinance of secession – subject to ratification by a vote of the people – and Virginia became the head and front of the Confederacy. North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas soon followed her lead. Meanwhile, and before the formal acts of secession, the Governors of Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee sent prompt and defiant answers to the requisition, emphatically refusing to furnish troops, as did also the Governors of Kentucky and Missouri.
The position of Maryland was most critical. This State was especially important, because the capital of the nation lay within her borders, and all the roads from the North leading to it passed through her territory. After the President's proclamation was issued, no doubt a large majority of her people sympathized with the South; but even had that sentiment been far more preponderating, there was an underlying feeling that by a sort of geographical necessity her lot was cast with the North, that the larger and stronger half of the nation would not allow its capital to be quietly disintegrated away by her secession. Delaware and Maryland were the only Border States which did not attempt to secede. Kentucky at first took the impossible stand of an armed neutrality. When this failed, a portion of her people passed an ordinance of secession, and a portion of the people of Missouri passed a similar ordinance.
It is now proper to give some explanation of the condition of affairs in Baltimore, at that time a city of 215,000 inhabitants.
Thomas Holliday Hicks, who had been elected by the American, or Know-Nothing party, three years before, was the Governor of the State. The city authorities, consisting of the mayor and city council, had been elected in October, 1860, a few weeks before the Presidential election, not as representatives of any of the national parties, but as the candidates of an independent reform party, and in opposition to the Know-Nothing party. This party, which then received its quietus, had been in power for some years, and had maintained itself by methods which made its rule little better than a reign of terror.6 No one acquainted with the history of that period can doubt that the reform was greatly needed. A large number of the best men of the American party united in the movement, and with their aid it became triumphantly successful, carrying every ward in the city. The city council was composed of men of unusually high character. "Taken as a whole" (Scharf's "History of Maryland," Vol. III., p. 284), "a better ticket has seldom, if ever, been brought out. In the selection of candidates all party tests were discarded, and all thought of rewarding partisan services repudiated." Four police commissioners, appointed by the Legislature – Charles Howard, William H. Gatchell, Charles D. Hinks and John W. Davis – men of marked ability and worth, had, with the mayor, who was ex officio a member of the board, the appointment and control of the police force. Mr. S. Teackle Wallis was the legal adviser of the board. The entire police force consisted of 398 men, and had been raised to a high degree of discipline and efficiency under the command of Marshal Kane. They were armed with revolvers.
Immediately after the call of the President for troops, including four regiments from Maryland, a marked division among the people manifested itself. Two large and excited crowds, eager for news, and nearly touching each other, stood from morning until late at night before two newspaper offices on Baltimore street which advocated contrary views and opinions. Strife was in the air. It was difficult for the police to keep the peace. Business was almost suspended. Was there indeed to be war between the sections, or could it yet, by some unlooked-for interposition, be averted? Would the Border States interfere and demand peace? There was a deep and pervading impression of impending evil. And now an immediate fear was as to the effect on the citizens of the passage of Northern troops through the city. Should they be permitted to cross the soil of Maryland, to make war on sister States of the South, allied to her by so many ties of affection, as well as of kindred institutions? On the other hand, when the capital of the nation was in danger, should not the kindest greeting and welcome be extended to those who were first to come to the rescue? Widely different were the answers given to these questions. The Palmetto flag had several times been raised by some audacious hands in street and harbor, but it was soon torn down. The National flag and the flag of the State, with its black and orange, the colors of Lord Baltimore, waved unmolested, but not side by side, for they had become symbols of different ideas, although the difference was, as yet, not clearly defined.
On the 17th of April, the state of affairs became so serious that I, as mayor, issued a proclamation earnestly invoking all good citizens to refrain from every act which could lead to outbreak or violence of any kind; to refrain from harshness of speech, and to render in all cases prompt and efficient aid, as by law they were required to do, to the public authorities, whose constant efforts would be exerted to maintain unbroken the peace and order of the city, and to administer the laws with fidelity and impartiality. I cannot flatter myself that this appeal produced much effect. The excitement was too great for any words to allay it.
On the 18th of April, notice was received from Harrisburg that two companies of United States artillery, commanded by Major Pemberton, and also four companies of militia, would arrive by the Northern
John P. Kennedy, of Baltimore, the well-known author, who had been member of Congress and Secretary of the Navy, published early in 1861 a pamphlet entitled "The Border States, Their Power and Duty in the Present Disordered Condition of the Country." His idea was that if concert of action could be had between the Border States and concurring States of the South which had not seceded, stipulations might be obtained from the Free States, with the aid of Congress, and, if necessary, an amendment of the Constitution, which would protect the rights of the South; but if this failed, that the Border States and their allies of the South would then be forced to consider the Union impracticable and to organize a separate confederacy of the Border States, with the association of such of the Southern and Free States as might be willing to accede to the proposed conditions. He hoped that the Union would thus be "reconstructed by the healthy action of the Border States." The necessary result, however, would have been that in the meantime three confederacies would have been in existence. And yet Mr. Kennedy had always been a Union man, and when the war broke out was its consistent advocate.
These proposals, from such different sources as Fernando Wood and John P. Kennedy, tend to show the uncertainty and bewilderment which had taken possession of the minds of men, and in which few did not share to a greater or less degree.
The culmination of this period of misrule was at the election in November, 1859, when the fraud and violence were so flagrant that the Legislature of the State unseated the whole Baltimore delegation – ten members. The city being thus without representation, it became necessary, when a special session of the Legislature was called in April, 1861, that a new delegation from Baltimore should be chosen. It was this same Legislature (elected in 1859), which took away from the mayor of the city the control of its police, and entrusted that force to a board of police commissioners. This change, a most fortunate one for the city at that crisis, resulted in the immediate establishment of good order, and made possible the reform movement of the next autumn.