Baltimore Riot of 1861 - Background

Background

Many Baltimoreans sympathized passionately with the Southern cause. Abraham Lincoln received only 1,100 of more than 30,000 votes cast for president in 1860. Lincoln's opponents were infuriated (and supporters disappointed) when the president-elect, fearing an assassination plot, traveled secretly through the city in February en route to his inauguration. 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. As the war began, the city's divided loyalties created tension. Supporters of secession and slavery organized themselves into a force called "National Volunteers", while unionists and abolitionists called themselves "Minute Men".

The American Civil War began on April 12, one week prior to the riot, with the battle of Fort Sumter. At the time, the slave states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas had not yet seceded from the U.S. The status of (Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky) (later known as "border states"), remained unknown. When Fort Sumter fell (without casualties) on April 13, the Virginia legislature took up a measure on secession. The measure passed on April 17 with little debate. Virginia's secession was particularly significant due to the state's industrial capacity. Sympathetic Marylanders, who had been supportive of 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.

Newly formed units were starting to transport themselves south, particularly to protect Washington, D.C. from the new Confederate threat in Virginia. Baltimore Mayor George Brown and Police Chief George Kane anticipate trouble and began efforts to placate the city's population.

On April 18, 460 newly mustered Pennsylvania volunteers arrived from the Northern Central Railway at the Bolton Street Station. Seven hundred National Volunteers rallied at the Washington Monument and traveled to the station to confront the troops. Kane's police force generally succeeded in ensuring the troops' safe passage to Camden Station. Nevertheless, stones and bricks were hurled (along with many insults) and Nicholas Biddle, a Black servant traveling with the regiment, was hit on the head.