- George William Brown
George William Brown was the mayor of
Baltimore, Maryland from1860 to1861 .Pratt Street Riot
Brown played an important role in controlling the
Pratt Street Riot onApril 19 ,1861 , at the onset of theAmerican Civil War . After the Pratt Street Riot, some small skirmishes occurred throughout Baltimore between citizens and police for the next month. However, in short time, a sense of normalcy returned to the city. Still, Mayor Brown and Maryland GovernorThomas Holliday Hicks implored PresidentAbraham Lincoln to reroute Union troops around Baltimore city and throughAnnapolis to avoid further confrontations.On the evening of
April 20 1861 , one day after the Pratt Street Riot, Governor Hicks authorized Mayor Brown to dispatch the Maryland state militia for the purpose of disabling the railroad bridges into the city. This was an act Hicks would later deny. One month later, a Maryland militia captain,John Merryman , was arrested without a writ ofhabeas corpus . This arrest sparked the case of "Ex parte Merryman ".President Lincoln agreed to reroute Union troops through Annapolis. The
Maryland capital city was a Southern Democratic town and full ofsecessionist s, but it was still safer than Baltimore. However, once enough Union troops had made it toWashington, D.C. , and the national capital city was well defended, Lincoln resolved to end the problems in Baltimore.Imprisonment
On
May 13 , the Union army entered Baltimore, occupied the city, and declaredmartial law . Mayor Brown, the city council, and the police commissioner, who were all seen as being pro-South, were arrested and imprisoned atFort McHenry for the balance of the war. The grandson ofFrancis Scott Key was also made a prisoner.Later life
Almost three years before he died, Brown wrote his memoir. In it. he was referred to
Quaker Johns Hopkins as a "wealthy Union man" and as a member of a committee of bankers who gave $500,000 to the city of Baltimore after the first bloodshed in the Civil War was shed there. Hopkins selected Brown as one of the trustees of the university (but not of the hospital) who would oversee the construction and founding of the institutions now known as theJohns Hopkins University andJohns Hopkins Hospital .References
Brown, G. W. (1887). Baltimore and the nineteenth of April 1861; a study of the war. Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science, extra vol. 3. Baltimore, N. Murray.
ee also
*
Baltimore Plot
*United States presidential election, 1860
*Thomas Holliday Hicks
*John Merryman
* "Ex parte Merryman "
*Maryland, My Maryland
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