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Year of Jubilee (1863)

 

An August 1812 newspaper article describes the violence perpetrated by a large mob on two dozen political opponents attempting to distribute their newspaper in the city.

 

 

Paranoia, or a Wise Move?

On the afternoon of 22 February 1861, Harrisburg welcomed Abraham Lincoln, President Elect of the United States, on his journey from Springfield to Washington D.C. In Harrisburg, Lincoln was to formally address the legislature after delivering a short speech to the assembled crowd at the Jones House, his lodging place for the evening before continuing on to Baltimore on the 23rd.

It was an exciting day for the city, and a tiring one for Mr. Lincoln. When all of the speeches and must appearances were done, the president-elect made the journey, with his retinue, back to the Jones House. Officially, Mr. Lincoln received a few guests in his room and retired at eight o’clock, having endured a very long day. Unofficially, however, great schemes that would greatly affect the future president’s first few months in office, and would color the way the nation viewed their new leader, were underway inside of the hotel.

Ad for the Jones House, 1869Abraham Lincoln stayed at the Jones House, on Market Square, during his 1861 visit to Harrisburg. The ad at left, from 1869, depicts the hotel as it would have appeared during that time.

Inside of the Jones House, Lincoln was in an urgent private conference that included, among others, Norman Judd, Governor Curtin and Colonel Sumner. The subject was a serious one: rumors that secession sympathizers had planned to either destroy his train on its journey from Harrisburg to Baltimore, or assassinate Lincoln upon his arrival in that city. Fantastic plans of explosives placed beneath railroad tracks, unruly mobs and fanatical assassins filled the room.

Lincoln was skeptical of the dire stories, but was finally convinced that he had to go along with a plan to spirit him secretly into Washington, thus foiling the Baltimore plotters. At about six o’clock, while seated at the dinner table, Lincoln was given a sign that all was in readiness and he excused himself to go to his room. He appeared shortly in a traveling suit, a soft felt hat in his pocket, and a shawl folded over his arm. A carriage was parked at a side door to the hotel, and Ward Hill Lamon entered first, followed by Mr. Lincoln. It took off rapidly, traveling south on Second Street toward a dark, waiting locomotive.

A single car attached to the locomotive was waiting at a remote grade crossing, and after Abraham Lincoln and a heavily armed Ward Hill Lamon were on board, it pulled out, without lights, headed toward Philadelphia where railroad detective Allen Pinkerton was already waiting, to conduct the future president on the next leg of the secret journey.

Was this secret flight from Harrisburg necessary? Were Lincoln's bodyguards being overprotective? Definitely not, according to historian Michael J. Kline, author of The Baltimore Plot: The First Conspiracy to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2008). Kline lays out the case for a highly organized conspiracy, based in Baltimore, and including leading city authorities, to assassinate Lincoln as he passed through on his way to his inauguration. But many of the details uncovered and documented by Kline were unknown to Lincoln's bodyguards at the time.

Instead, Norman Judd, Allen Pinkerton, and the rest of Lincoln's retinue took for their frame of reference the longstanding reputation for violence and ruffianism that gave Baltimore its unflattering nickname of "Mobtown." One of the most notorious mob incidents occurred in the summer of 1812, as the young country was preparing to go to war with Great Britain.

A number of men were attacked by the "Mob of 1812" in Baltimore when they attempted to distribute a politically unpopular newspaper that opposed the declaration of war with Great Britain. About two dozen armed Federalists garrisoned a strong brick house on South Charles Street, near Mercer, from which they intended to publish and distribute the Federal Republican newspaper. They were led by newspaper editor Alexander Contee Hanson, and Revolutionary War hero General Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee.

On the night of 27 July 1812, a Democratic-Republican mob surrounded and stoned the house, but city authorities refused to act. It was during the mob's siege of the house that one of its defenders, Ephraim Gaither, was severely wounded by a bullet. The defenders of the house surrendered to city authorities the next morning for their own protection, but later that day the mob stormed the jail after meeting no resistance from police, and beat, tortured, and maimed most of the detained men, killing one of them immediately. General Henry Lee, a confidant of George Washington and father of Robert E. Lee, sustained injuries so severe that his speech and health were permanently affected.

More on the Mob of 1812, or Hanson's Mob

More on Lincoln's visit to Harrisburg


The Year of Jubilee

Vol. 1: Men of God and Vol. 2: Men of Muscle

by George F. Nagle

  Both volumes of the Afrolumens book are now out of print, but may be found used. You may also read the entire book for free on this site. See the link below.

Read the book here

 

 

 

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