The
minutemen of 1861
Richard Howe
On a small patch of grass wedged between
two busy streets in front of Lowell City
Hall sits a twenty-five foot high granite
obelisk.
Few passersby know that this monument
commemorates nineteen year
old Luther Ladd and twenty year old
Addison Whitney, two Lowell mill workers
who, along with Sumner Needham of
Lawrence and Charles Taylor of parts
unknown, were the first soldiers to die
in the American Civil War. Fewer
still realize that Ladd, Whitney and
Taylor are actually buried beneath the
monument, right in front of City Hall.
While our neighbors may commemorate
Patriots Day by recalling the
opening battles of the Revolutionary War
at Lexington and Concord not to
mention the Marathon and an early Red Sox
start some in Lowell devote a few
moments each April 19th to remembering
the members of the Sixth Massachusetts
Volunteer Infantry Regiment, a unit drawn
primarily from Lowell and Lawrence, and
their struggle in Baltimore on another
April 19th.
Heres what happened.
Shortly after learning that the South
Carolina militia had attacked Fort
Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln called
for 75,000 volunteers from the northern
states to come south to suppress the
rebellion.
Because of the foresight of Governor John
Andrew and Lowells Benjamin Butler
(a general of the Volunteers) the
Massachusetts troops were well organized,
well equipped, and ready to leave on
short notice.
The train carrying the regiment left
Lowell on April 17, 1861, just two days
after the surrender of Fort Sumter.
Because Washington, DC, was garrisoned by
only six companies of regular troops and
fifteen companies of local militia whose
pro-Southern sentiments made them more of
a threat than an asset, the Sixth
Regiment was ordered to proceed to the
capital as quickly as possible.
The quickest route to Washington led
through New York, Philadelphia, and
Baltimore, a city with extensive
economic, social, and cultural ties to
the south.
The configuration of the rail route
through Baltimore heightened the risk of
confrontation. Trains coming from
the north arrived at the President Street
Station.
Individual cars were then decoupled and
drawn by horse a mile through the city to
Camden Station (adjacent to the current
Camden Yards baseball stadium).
There, the cars would be reunited with a
locomotive and continue the journey
southward.
Upon his arrival in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, at 5:00 P.M. on April 18,
Colonel Edward F. Jones, the commander of
the Sixth Regiment, learned of the
likelihood of violence in Baltimore and
formulated a plan designed to avoid
confrontation.
Rather than remain the night in
Philadelphia, the regiment would depart
at 1:00 A.M., placing it in Baltimore at
first light, when the troublemakers would
still be asleep.
Once there, the entire unit would
dismount from the train and quickly march
through the city to Camden Station.
The logic of the plan was clear since an
entire regiment would likely intimidate
any mob that appeared.
The plan went awry before the troops even
reached Baltimore.
Crossing from Delaware into Maryland, the
ten cars of the train were floated across
the Susquehanna River by ferry.
Although Colonel Jones failed to realize
it at the time, the cars were reattached
to the locomotive in a different order,
leaving Jones in the fourth car of the
train, not the first.
When the train finally arrived in
Baltimore, the railroad workers
immediately began shuttling individual
cars through the city.
By the time Jones realized what was
happening, his unit was scattered
throughout Baltimore, and all he could do
was wait and hope that the cars all
reached Camden Station intact.
The first seven cars did just that, but
their passage had alerted city residents
who took to the street, blocking the way
of the final three cars.
A captain took command of the troops in
those cars, got them off the train and
led them through the streets and the
ever-growing crowd. Bricks and then
bullets soon followed the insults of the
crowd.
Four soldiers were killed; thirty-one
were wounded.
The men of the Sixth returned fire,
killing twelve and wounding an untold
number of civilians. After reaching
the relative safety of Camden Station,
the regiment reformed and continued on to
Washington where its men were welcomed as
heroes and housed in the Senate chamber.
The riot in Baltimore gave the Sixth
Massachusetts an early prominence that
was eclipsed by the enormous scope of the
war and that regiments limited
participation in it.
At the time, however, Ladd, Whitney,
Taylor and Needham were seen as the
first martyrs of the great
rebellion and provided the North
with symbols to rally around. The
men of the Sixth Regiment were not
professional soldiers.
They were ordinary citizens who came from
all walks of life, from lawyers to
la-borers. Some died during the
war, others never returned to the
Merrimack Valley.
Those who did return, however, made
countless contributions both big and
small to their respective communities
throughout the post-war period. We
still feel their influence today.
Richard P. Howe Jr. is
the creator of www.richardhowe.com, a blog that provides
commentary on politics in Lowell. He also
serves as Register of Deeds of the
Northern District of Middlesex County.
You can email him at lowelldeeds@comcast.net
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