The Baltimore riots of 1835 , also known as the Baltimore bank riot , took place in Baltimore , Maryland , from August 6 to 9, 1835, and was considered the largest and most devastating riot in any US city before the Civil War. [1] .
| Riots in Baltimore | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||
| Parties to the conflict | |||||||||
| Local population | Police and local volunteer forces | ||||||||
| Key figures | |||||||||
| is unknown | General Sam Smith | ||||||||
History
In 1834, the Maryland Bank closed in Baltimore, with the result that depositors and creditors lost a few million dollars in total. For 17 months, the victims were awaiting a court decision on the payments due to them, but when this decision was not made, the cup of public patience was full and the residents staged a pogrom. The first to suffer was the house of Reverdy Johnson, one of the directors of the Maryland Bank. On August 6, 1835, the crowd broke the windows in his house and, satisfied with their deeds, dispersed. The mayor of the city, Jesse Hunt, fearing renewed unrest, sent a group of police and civilians to guard Johnson's house. The next day, the crowd returned to Johnson's house and, ignoring the guards, broke several more windows. Hunt allocated 30 armed riders to block the area through which the path to Johnson’s house ran, but the next day the crowd went to the house of another bank director, John Glenn. Having broken into Glenn’s house, the rebels began to pull furniture and other things into the street, then burning them at the stake. Police arrived and started firing into the air, but the crowd did not disperse until the facade of Glenn’s house was destroyed. The next day, the crowd returned to Johnson's house, where they broke down part of the house and burned his library. After this, the rioters defeated the house of one director of the bank - John Morris, and then reached the house of the mayor of Hunt, who suffered the same fate. Then the riots spread to other parts of the city and, as before, were accompanied by arsons of buildings, destruction, robbery, fights and shooting from firearms [2] .
Riots in the city turned to 83-year-old General Sam Smith, a veteran of the Anglo-American War , during which Smith led the defense of Baltimore. Smith took control, while Mayor Hunt resigned. Smith gathered about three thousand armed volunteers and asked for help from Washington . On August 9, volunteer rioters were identified and arrested by volunteers, and the pogroms themselves stopped by the evening of that day. Although federal troops arrived from Washington, their help was not needed: the riots were suppressed by the forces of citizens under the leadership of General Smith [3] .
Residents of the city, including bankers, whose homes and property were affected by the riots, sued the Maryland government, which failed to protect them from the rioters. The state paid the plaintiffs a total of 100 thousand dollars [3] .
Notes
- ↑ Shalhope, 2009 , p. eight.
- ↑ Beirne, 1984 , p. 147-148.
- ↑ 1 2 Beirne, 1984 , p. 149.
Literature
- Robert E. Shalhope. The Baltimore bank riot: political upheaval in antebellum Maryland. - Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
- Francis F. Beirne. The Amiable Baltimoreans. - Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.
- John Thomas Scharf. The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of Baltimore Town and Baltimore City from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. - Turnbull Bros, 1874.