George H. Steuart (militia General) - Civil War

Civil War

By April 1861 it had become clear that war was inevitable. On April 16 Steuart's eldest son, George H. Steuart, then an officer in the United States Army, resigned his captain's commission to join the Confederacy. On April 19 Baltimore was disrupted by riots, during which Southern sympathizers attacked Union troops passing through the city by rail, causing what were arguably the first casualties of the Civil War. Steuart ordered his militia to assemble, armed and uniformed, to repel the Federal soldiers, as Steuart himself was strongly sympathetic to the Confederacy, along with most of his senior officers. It is possible that he may even have contemplated an invasion of Washington DC. Perhaps knowing this, and no doubt aware that public opinion in Baltimore was divided, Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks refused to order out the militia. Steuart's eldest son commanded one of the city militias during the disturbances of April 1861 and, in a letter to his father, the younger Steuart wrote:

"I found nothing but disgust in my observations along the route and in the place I came to - a large majority of the population are insane on the one idea of loyalty to the Union and the legislature is so diminished and unreliable that I rejoiced to hear that they intended to adjourn...it seems that we are doomed to be trodden on by these troops who have taken military possession of our State, and seem determined to commit all the outrages of an invading army."

Steuart's brother, the physician Richard Sprigg Steuart, was also in Baltimore during the riots and he held a somewhat different view of the state of public opinion in the city:

"I happened to be in Baltimore on the night of the 19th April 1861, and witnessed the outburst of feeling on the part of the people. Generally, when the Massachusetts troops were passing thru the city of Baltimore, it was evident to me that 75 p.c. of the population was in favour of repelling these troops. Instinctively the people seemed to look upon them as intruders, or as invaders of the South, not as defenders of the City of Baltimore. How or by whom the first blow was given can not be now ascertained, but the feeling of resistance was contagious and powerful. The Mayor of the City, nevertheless, though it his duty to keep the peace and protect these troops in their passage thru Baltimore."

Steuart and his son made strenuous efforts to persuade Marylanders to secede from the Union, and to use the militia to prevent the occupation of the State by Union soldiers. But by April 25 his efforts had become largely defensive. In a letter of the same date he wrote to Governor of Virginia John Letcher stating that he was:

"very anxious to hold a strong position at or near the Relay House so as to guard and keep open and at the same time cutting it off from Washington"

Steuart's efforts to persuade Maryland to secede from the Union were in vain. On April 29, the Maryland Legislature voted 53–13 against secession. and the state was swiftly occupied by Union soldiers to prevent any reconsideration.