Baltimore During the Civil War by Scott Sumpter Sheads and Daniel Carroll Toomey. hc, dj, 200pp., illus., index.
Baltimore During the Civil War
by Scott Sumpter Sheads & Daniel Carroll Toomey
To appreciate the events which occured in Baltimore City during the Civil War one must understand its pre-war history. Baltimore Town did not begin to prosper until after the American Revolution. It was blessed not only with a good harbor, but with one that, thanks to the intrusion of the Chesapeake Bay on the continent, was 200 miles closer to the western markets than other ports located on or near the Atlantic coast. This was a tremendous advantage during the period of time when land transportation consisted of wagon trains and dirt roads. An advantage that with all the advancements of technology, was not lost until the later part of the twentieth century.
A second benefit to this geographic position was a city located on the fall line where fast moving rivers like the Pataspsco River and Jones Falls could supply an abundance of water power for mills and factories. This combination of fresh water and a deep water port, also made Baltimore an ideal site for shipbuilding. Again the port supported this growth by drawing immigrants from western Europe to work in the factories provided a means of shipping the manufactured goods to foreign markets.
The next step in the growth of the city was the founding of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad in 1828. Far sighted men like Phillip Thomas, its first president, created a corporate giant that not only connected the Ohio Valley with the docks of Baltimore, but acted as a magnet for investment capital and new technologies. It was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that offered Samuel F.B. Morris the use of its right of way to run his experimental telegraph line that in time gave the railroad a dynamic management tool in the form of instant communication over long distances.
The first great landmark of the city was Federal Hill (previously named as Captain John Smith Hill for his log entry of the site in 1608) where Marylanders celebrated the ratification of the Federal Constitution in 1788. In 1797, the three seperate communities of Jones Town, Baltimore Town and Fells Point were incorporated to form Baltimore City.
The defeat of the British during the War of 1812 gave Baltimore a near city-state pride in its celebrated defense of Fort McHenry in September 1814. The publication of ìThe Star-Spangled Bannerî by Maryland attorney Francis Scott Key gave the city and nation its first American iconñthe United States Flag, a symbol of a new nation and a young maritime nationís flag, both nationalistic identities, not heretofore recognized. The return in 1815, of the warís most successful Baltimore privateer, the Chasseur, prompted the editor of the Niles Weekly Register to proclaim it ìthe pride of Baltimore.î
That same year the cornerstone was laid for the Battle Monument dedicated to the 1814 Defenders on land donated by John Eager Howard. The monument and Fort McHenry were constantly linked to the identity of the city in the decades before the Civil War and were obvious symbols of defiance and suppression during the war years.
By 1860 Baltimore was the largest industrial city in the South and the third largest city in the United States. Three major railroads and an endless stream of sailing vessels traded its commerce over a major part of the country and the world. At the same time a flood of Irish and German immigrants during the 1850ís combined with the industrialization of the city to undermine the institution of slavery. Baltimore City had a strong Southern social order with many ties to Virginia and the deep South. Yet, only in Southern Maryland did the plantation system of the colonial period remain unchanged.
Its population of 200,000 in 1860 contained 50,000 free blacks, the largest anywhere in the nation. Those still enslaved in the city were primarily house servants or in some way specially trained. In 1864 hundreds of Free Black males would join their still enslaved brothers to form six full regiments of U.S. Colored Troops which were recruited in Baltimore City and on both shores of the Chesapeake Bay.
When the war came in 1861, Maryland would be on the fault line of secession no matter which government its citizens voted to support. Baltimore City with its transportation and industrial assets would be a valuable prize to whichever side could control her. It is no wonder that all but the most heated firebrands waited until every avenue of compromise was exhausted before choosing sides in a war in which they had much to lose and very little to gain.
Never before have the people, places and events that occured in this great city between the years 1860 and 1865 been presented in one continuous story. The authors now proudly tell that story in Baltimore During the Civil War.