Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[405] mostly without arms, expecting to receive new and improved equipments there. These were not ready. The imminence of the danger to the National Capital would admit of no delay, not even long enough for the companies to be organized as a regiment. They were ordered forward the next morning by the Northern Central Railway, to Baltimore, in company with about forty regular soldiers, who were going to re-enforce the little garrison at Fort McHenry. The battery of the Ringgold Artillery was left at Harrisburg. The muskets in the hands of the regulars, and thirty others borne by the volunteers, were the only weapons with which these prospective defenders of the Capital entered a hostile territory--Maryland being essentially such at that time. At home and on their way to Harrisburg they were cheered by the patriotic zeal and unbounded enthusiasm of the people. Men, women, and children joined in the acclamation.¹

Baltimore, through which all troops traveling by railway from the North and East to Washington were compelled to pass, was then under the complete control of the secessionists. The wealthier classes were attached by ties of blood and marriage with the people of the South, and the system of slavery common to both was a powerful promoter of the most cordial sympathy. The dominant classes in the city were at that time disloyal, yet a large majority of the inhabitants were true to the old flag. Most of those in authority were disunionists, including the Marshal of Police (Kane²), and were passive, if not secretly active friends of the secession movement.

It was known that the Pennsylvania troops would go through Baltimore at a little past noon, and the Marshal, doubtless for the purpose of concealing dark designs, issued an order for his force to be vigilant, and preserve the peace, while the officers of the “State-rights Association” hastened to publicly assure him, in the most solemn manner, that no demonstrations should be made against National troops passing through Baltimore. The Mayor (George W. Brown), whose sympathies were with the disunionists, issued a proclamation invoking all good citizens to preserve the peace and good order of the town. Notwithstanding these apparent efforts of the authorities to prevent disturbance, when the Pennsylvanians arrived, at near two o'clock in the afternoon, they were surrounded by an angry, howling mob, who only lacked the organization to which they attained twenty-four hours later, to have been the actors in a fearful tragedy on that day, instead of on the next.

News had just arrived of the passage of the Ordinance of Secession by the Virginia Convention, and it was spreading rapidly over the city. The excited multitude, of whom a large proportion were South Carolinians and