On April 19, 1861, an angry mob with pro-secessionist intentions attacked US Army troops on the streets of Baltimore, an event known as The Baltimore Riot of 1861, or alternately as The Pratt Street Riot or even the more dramatic Pratt Street Massacre. Maryland, being a slave state at the onset of the American Civil War, was not surprisingly divided on whether or not to remain in the Union or join the Confederate States.
Digging Deeper
The dispute in Baltimore transcended state borders, and the protesters/rioters were not exclusively from Maryland, consisting of local “Copperhead” Democrats that opposed the waging of war against the seceding states and Southern sympathizers, some of which were from other Southern states. The soldiers sent to Baltimore to stamp out the protests were mainly militia from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, a geographic fact sure to instill resentment on the part of Marylanders and other Southerners.
At the time, Baltimore was a major US city, and President Abraham Lincoln had only received one thousand of the thirty thousand votes cast in the city during the 1860 Presidential election. Obviously, Lincoln and his vow of maintaining the Union was not overly popular in Baltimore. Allan Pinkerton, the famous private eye and security expert, helped guard Lincoln from a rumored assassination plot causing Lincoln to sneak through Baltimore secretly on his way to his own inauguration in Washington, D.C. in March of 1861. In spite of the high level of anti-Union and anti-Lincoln feeling in Baltimore, there was the nation’s largest population of free African Americans (25,000) and a considerable abolitionist presence, further aggravating tensions in the city.
