The Civil War - 150 Years Later - Baltimore Crackdown

In this and subsequent special editions of Hooves, Heels and Wheels, the blog will take a look at the 150th anniversary of the events of the Civil War, and reflect on how they came about, and what implications they have for today ...

The Civil War

150 years ago This Week - Baltimore Crackdown

May 13 - 23rd, 1861

In the last weeks of April 1861 and the first few weeks of May, it remained an open and troubling question as to whether or not Maryland would be a Union or Confederate state – both Americas counted many Marylanders as their allies.

150 years ago this week, on May 13th, the question was settled by Union General Benjamin Butler, a Massachusetts militia general who, throughout the entire Civil War would reveal a talent for sensation, audacity, and for getting himself into trouble.

The governor of Maryland was Thomas A. Hicks, who was pro-Union. The Mayor and Police Marshall of Baltimore, George W Brown, and George P Kane were pro-Confederate, and for a time their sentiments would hold sway. As Union soldiers tried to make their way to Washington, first to defend the capital and then to invade the South, Maryland secessionists tried to thwart them every step of the way. Not only was the 6th Massachusetts attacked on April 19th, soon after telegraph lines were cut, and railroad bridges were burnt.

For a few weeks, Lincoln made do by avoiding Baltimore altogether, and ferrying troops from New York, Boston and Philadelphia to Annapolis, and having them at first march, and later on travel by train to Washington.

A Maryland delegation audaciously went to the White House, and demanded that the State of Maryland no longer be used as a roadway to move soldiers. An exasperated Abraham Lincoln spelled out the situation for them.

“ I must have troops to defend the capital! Our men are not moles and can’t dig under the earth. They are not birds, and can’t fly through the air. There is no way but to march them across, and this we must do.”

If the Union philosophy of the Civil War was that the Federal government needed to not bow to demands of individual states, then Lincoln’s response was predictable. If the US was not going to respect South Carolina’s or Alabama’s “right” to leave the Union then it wasn’t about to respect Maryland’s “right” to refuse to allow US troops across it’s soil.

Gen Ben Butler had trained the 6th Massachusetts regiment, the one that had been involved in the Pratt Street Riot in Baltimore. In the latter part of April, he brought more Massachusetts troops into the Capital by ferrying them down to Annapolis. By April 25th, he had fixed the rail line, and thousands of Union troops could now pour daily into Washington DC. The Union Army began growing.

On May 13th, Butler ended Baltimore and Maryland’s dreams of succession once and for all. On the night of May 13-14 th, Butler, moving without orders and with the utmost secrecy, fortified Federal Hill in downtown Baltimore with 1000 men and six cannons. It was a daring and dangerous move that could have backfired badly. Indeed, General Winfield Scott was furious! He reprimanded Butler for acting without instruction, risking a public disaster, and removed him from command of Baltimore.


Still the North would reap the benefits of Butler’s bold move. Union soldiers could now fire on every street and building in the city. There could be no mistake that Baltimore was firmly in Federal grasp. Pro-Confederates either left town, or quieted down. There would be no further disturbances from Baltimore.

In the months and years to come, the citizens of Maryland’s first city would pay dearly for their flirtation with the Southern Confederacy- and their violence and sabotage towards the Union cause. President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Baltimore, and would clap many prominent pro-South Baltimoreans in irons, imprisoning them in Fort McHenry without trial.



Baltimore would endure the war as military district, under a US Army administrator rather then a democratically elected mayor and city council. There’d be no freedom of speech or press, and anyone suspected of aiding the Confederacy would soon find him or herself in jail.



Such actions of a president raised serious questions about presidential power in times of national crisis. Should the US government be allowed to suspend civil liberties when there’s a threat to the nation? Does the freedom to rebel and sabotage the government exist under the blanket of civil freedoms? Surely the rioting of April convinced many in the North that Baltimore simply could not be trusted, and had to be secured, even to the woe of citizens rights.

Of course these questions have never truly been answered once and for all– modern leaders like George W. Bush and Barak Obama have wrangled with them in recent years during the War on Terror. Fort McHenry, the icon of freedom in 1814, was the Guantanamo Bay of its time in 1861-1865. The balance between individual freedom and national safety has always swayed to and fro, never more dramatically then 150 years ago this week.