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Baltimore Riot Trail
Combat on Pratt Street
Baltimore – A House Divided
On April 19, 1861, Confederate sympathizers attacked the 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment as it changed trains en route to Washington, which the secessionists hoped to isolate. To learn more about the Baltimore Riot, the city's role in the Civil War, and railroad history, please visit the Baltimore Civil War Museum -- President Street Station, at the corner of President and Fleet Streets. Open daily 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
When Capt. Albert S. Follansbee's four companies of the 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment passed here en route to Camden Station to change trains for Washington on April 19, 1861, a pro-Confederate mob attacked with rocks and bullets. As George Wilson Booth, a state militiaman who joined the rioters, later wrote,
A soldier, struck by a stone, fell almost at my feet, and as he fell, dropped his musket, which was immediately seized by Edward W. Beatty a port customs officer, who raised it to his shoulder and fired the first shot into the column.
As he fired he turned to the crowd and asked if anyone had a cartridge. I gave him one or two and showed him how to reload then betook myself to the protection of the first doorway thus escaping the bullets that were sweeping the street.
The rear files faced about and delivered a volley into the crowd, who responded with pistol shots, stones, clubs, and other missiles. A perfect fusillade for the next few blocks was kept up between the troops and the outraged mob.
The volley killed 20-year-old William Clark, of Company C, 15th South Carolina Heavy Artillery Battalion, making him the first Confederate casualty of the war. Francis Xavier Ward was wounded as he tried to seize the regimental flag from Sgt. Timothy Crowley. Later, James Ryder Randall, a Marylander teaching in Louisiana, expressed his sympathies in the secessionist poem "My Maryland," the official state song since 1939.
My Maryland
The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland! |