Baltimore riot of 1861 The Baltimore riot of 1861 ( also called the Pratt Street Riot and the Pratt Street Massacre ) was a conflict that took place on April 19 , 1861 , in Baltimore , Maryland between Confederate sympathizers and members of the Massachusetts militia en route to Washington for Federal service . It is regarded by historians as the first bloodshed of the American Civil War . Background . Many Baltimoreans sympathized passionately with the Southern cause . Abraham Lincoln received only 1 , 100 of more than 30 , 000 votes cast in the city 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 state s 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 militia units from several Northern states were starting to transport themselves south , particularly to protect Washington , D . C . from the new Confederate threat in Virginia . Baltimore Mayor George William Brown and new Police Marshal ( chief ) George Proctor Kane anticipated trouble and began efforts to placate the city ' s population . On Thursday , April 18 , 460 newly mustered Pennsylvania volunteers ( generally from the Pottstown area ) arrived from Harrisburg on the Northern Central Railway at the Bolton Street Station off North Howard Street ( present site of the later Fifth Regiment Armory ) . They were joined by several regiments of regular United States Army troops under command of John C . Pemberton ( later the Confederate general and commander at the siege of Vicksburg in Mississippi whose surrender in July 1863 , resulted in the first split of the Confederacy ) returning from duty on the western frontier . They split off from Howard Street in downtown Baltimore and marched over east to Fort McHenry and reported for duty there . Seven hundred " National Volunteers " of southern sympathizers rallied at the Washington Monument and traveled to the station to confront the combined units of troops , which unbeknownst to them were unarmed and had weapons unloaded . Kane ' s city police force generally succeeded in ensuring the Pennsylvania troops ' safe passage marching south on Howard Street to Camden Street Station of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad . 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 . But that night , the Pennsylvania troops , later known as " The First Defenders " camped at the U . S . Capitol under the uncompleted dome under construction . April 19 , 1861 . The Sixth Massachusetts Militia departed from Boston , Massachusetts on 17 April and arrived in New York on the morning of the 18th . On the evening of the 18th , the militia arrived in Philadelphia . According to the report of Colonel Edward F . Jones , Sixth Massachusetts Militia , during their travel , James Brady was “ taken insane ” and left in Delanco Township , New Jersey , with J . C . Buck . After leaving Philadelphia , Jones received information of that passage through Baltimore “ would be resisted ” . Jones went through the railroad cars and gave the order : On April 19 , the Union ' s Sixth Massachusetts Militia ( later mustered into federal service as a regiment ) was traveling south to Washington , D . C . through Baltimore . Due to an ordinance preventing rail lines through the city , there was no direct rail connection between the Philadelphia , Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad ' s President Street Station and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ' s Camden Station ( ten blocks to the west ) . Rail cars that transferred between the two stations had to be pulled by horses along Pratt Street . As the militia regiment transferred between stations , a mob of secessionists and Southern sympathizers attacked the train cars and blocked the route . When it became apparent that they could travel by horse no further , the troops got out of the cars and marched in formation through the city . However , the mob followed the soldiers , breaking store windows and causing damage until they finally blocked the soldiers . The mob attacked the rear companies of the regiment with " bricks , paving stones , and pistols . " In response , several soldiers fired into the mob , beginning a giant brawl between the soldiers , the mob , and the Baltimore police . In the end , the soldiers got to the Camden Station , and the police were able to block the crowd from them . The regiment had left behind much of their equipment , including their marching band ' s instruments . Four soldiers ( Corporal Sumner Needham of Co I and Privates Luther C . Ladd , Charles Taylor , and Addison Whitney of Company D ) and twelve civilians were killed in the riot . About 36 of the regiment were also wounded and left behind . It is unknown how many additional civilians were injured . Sumner Henry Needham is sometimes considered to be the first Union casualty of the war , though he was killed by civilians in a Union state . Needham is buried in Lawrence , Massachusetts . Ladd and Whitney are buried in Lowell , Massachusetts . Taylor was buried in Baltimore ; though his grave was lost , his name appears on the Lowell Monument . The same day , after the attack on the soldiers , the office of the " Baltimore Wecker " , a German - language newspaper , was completely wrecked and the building seriously damaged by the same mob . The publisher , William Schnauffer , and the editor , Wilhelm Rapp , whose lives were threatened , were compelled to leave town . The publisher later returned and resumed publication of the " Wecker " which continued throughout the war a firm supporter of the Union cause . The editor moved to another paper in Illinois . As a result of the riot in Baltimore and pro - Southern sympathies of much of the city ' s populace , the Baltimore Steam Packet Company also declined the same day a Federal government request to transport Union forces to relieve the beleaguered Union naval yard facility at Portsmouth , Virginia . Aftermath . In Brown ' s later assessment , it was the Baltimore riot that pushed the two sides over the edge into full - scale war , " because then was shed the first blood in a conflict between the North and the South ; then a step was taken which made compromise or retreat almost impossible ; then passions on both sides were aroused which could not be controlled " . On July 10 , 1861 , a grand jury of the United States District Court indicted Samuel Mactier , Lewis Bitter , James McCartney , Philip Casmire , Michael Hooper and Richard H . Mitchell for their part in the riot . After the April 19 riot , some small skirmishes occurred throughout Baltimore between citizens and police for the next month , but a sense of normalcy returned as the city was cleaned up . Mayor Brown and Maryland Governor Hicks implored President Lincoln to send no further troops through Maryland to avoid further confrontations . However , as Lincoln remarked to a peace delegation from the Young Men ' s Christian Association , Union soldiers were neither birds to fly over Maryland , nor moles to burrow under it . On the evening of April 20 Hicks also authorized Brown to dispatch the Maryland state militia for the purpose of disabling the railroad bridges into the city — an act he would later deny . One of the militia captains was John Merryman , who was arrested one month later , and held in defiance of a writ of " habeas corpus " , which led to the case of " Ex parte Merryman " . On April 19 , Major General Robert Patterson , commander of the Department of Washington ( Pennsylvania , Delaware , Maryland , and the District of Columbia ) , ordered Brigadier General Benjamin Franklin Butler , with the 8th Massachusetts , to open and secure a route from Annapolis through Annapolis Junction to Washington . The 8th Massachusetts arrived by ship at Annapolis on April 20 . Gov . Hicks and the Mayor of Annapolis protested , but Butler ( a clever politician ) bullied them into allowing troops to land at Annapolis , saying , " ' I " must " land , for my troops are hungry . ' — ' No one in Annapolis will sell them anything , ' replied these authorities of the State and city . Butler intimated that armed men were not always limited to the necessity of " purchasing " food when famished . " The 8th Massachusetts , with the 7th New York , proceeded to Annapolis Junction ( halfway between Baltimore and Washington ) , and the 7th New York went on to Washington , where , on the afternoon of April 25 , they became the first troops to reach the capital by this route . There were calls for Maryland to declare secession in the wake of the riot . Governor Hicks called a special session of the $ 3 to consider the situation . Since Annapolis , the capital , was occupied by Federal troops , and Baltimore was harboring many pro - Confederate mobs , Hicks directed the legislature to meet in Frederick , in the predominantly Unionist western part of the state . The legislature met on April 26 ; on April 29 , it voted 53 – 13 against secession . Many more Union troops arrived . On May 13 , Butler sent Union troops into Baltimore and declared martial law . He was replaced as commander of the Department of Annapolis by George Cadwalader , another Brigadier General in the United States Volunteers . A man supposed to be a Maryland State Militia soldier was detained in Ft . McHenry , and Judge Giles , in Baltimore , issued a writ of habeas corpus , but Major W . W . Morris , commander of the fort , wrote back , " At the date of issuing your writ , and for two weeks previous , the city which you live , and where your court has been held , was entirely under the control of revolutionary authorities . Within that period United States soldiers , while committing no offense , had been perfidiously attacked and inhumanly murdered in your streets ; no punishment had been awarded , and , I believe , no arrests had been made for these crimes ; supplies of provisions intended for this garrison has been stopped ; the intention to capture this fort had been boldly proclaimed ; your most public thoroughfares were daily patrolled by large numbers of troops , armed and clothed , at least in part , with articles stolen from the United States ; and the Federal flag , while waving over the Federal offices , was cut down by some person wearing the uniform of a Maryland soldier . To add the foregoing , an assembly elected in defiance of law , but claiming to be the legislative body of your State , and so recognized by the Executive of Maryland , was debating the Federal compact . If all this be not rebellion , I know not what to call it . I certainly regard it as sufficient legal cause for suspending the privilege of the writ of " habeas corpus " . " Moreover , Morris wrote , " If , in an experience of thirty - three years , you have never before known the writ to be disobeyed , it is only because such a contingency in political affairs as the present has never before arisen . " Just before daybreak on June 27 , soldiers marched from Ft . McHenry on orders from Major General Nathaniel P . Banks , who had succeeded Cadwalader as commander of the Department of Annapolis , and arrested Marshal George P . Kane . Banks appointed Colonel John Reese Kenly of the 1st Regiment Maryland Volunteer Infantry as provost marshal to superintend the Baltimore police ; Kenly enrolled , organized , and armed 250 Unionists for a new police . When the old Board of Police would not recognize the new police , and tried to continue the old police , they were arrested and sent to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor . On July 10 , George R . Dodge , a civilian , was appointed as marshal of police . Major General John Adams Dix suceeeded Banks in command of the Department of Annapolis , and Colonel Abram Duryée ' s 5th New York Volunteer Infantry , " Duryée ' s Zouaves , " constructed Fort Federal Hill , Baltimore . The legislature ' s special session at Frederick continued for several weeks . Secession resolutions were submitted , but rejected in part because it was believed that the legislature did not have the power to declare secession . The legislature adjourned on August 7 , planning to reconvene on September 17 . However , on that day several pro - secession members were arrested by Federal troops and Baltimore police officers , and the session was canceled . Some Southerners reacted with passion to the incident . James Ryder Randall , a teacher in Louisiana but a native Marylander who had lost a friend in the riots , wrote " Maryland , My Maryland " for the Southern cause in response to the riots . The poem was later set to " Lauriger Horatius " , the tune of " O Tannenbaum " , a melody popular in the South , and referred to the riots with lines such as " Avenge the patriotic gore / That flecked the streets of Baltimore . " It was not until seventy - eight years later that it became Maryland ' s state song ; there have been efforts to remove it since . Delaware , bordering Maryland , was reinforced with Union troops to prevent similar events . Kentucky declared its neutrality ( although it would eventually join the Union ' s side ) , and although Missouri was on the Union side , a Confederate government - in - exile existed in Arkansas and Texas .