Barricade at Jones Falls Bridge

— Baltimore - A House Divided —

(Preface): On April 19, 1861, Confederate sympathizers attacked the 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment as it changed trains en route to Washington, which the secessionists hoped to isolate. To learn more about the Baltimore Riot, the city's role in the Civil War, and railroad history, please visit the Baltimore Civil War Museum—President Street Station, at the corner of President and Fleet Streets. Open daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

While Capt. Albert S. Follansbee waited at President Street Station with the last four companies of the 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, horses pulled several carloads of soldiers to Camden Station. Near the bridge here, however, an anchor and other objects on the tracks at Pratt and President Streets derailed the seventh car carrying Maj. Benjamin Watson's company. Watson commandeered a passing team of horses and got the car back on the tracks, but a pro-Confederate mob attacked with stones and bricks, shattering windows and sending glass flying through the car.

The frightened driver quickly unhitched his horses and tried to blend into the crowd, but Watson brought him back at gunpoint to reattach the team and pull the car to safety as the soldiers lay on the floor. Watson ordered them to "ignore the assault and to lie still as they were not being fired upon." After one of his men called out that his finger had been shot off, however, Watson ordered them to "rise up from the car floor and return fire."

Back at President Street Station, Follansbee received orders to march his companies to Camden Station. Harassed by the mob along the way, the men reached the Jones Falls Bridge to find a barricade, including a cannon, blocking their path here. Had the gun been loaded, it might have raked the streets with deadly effect, but the soldiers simply climbed over the obstructions and continued their march.

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