Archaeology

Arts

Economy

Education

Historical Overviews

Science, & Technology

Sports & Recreation

Transportation

Wildlife & Natural Resources

Search:

Maryland National Guard

Maryland Historical Society

In the summer of 1877, as the effects of an economic depression lingered, railroad corporations across the country attempted to keep profits up while reducing costs with cutbacks, layoffs, and wage reductions. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) Railroad was no exception. On July 11, 1877, company president John Work Garrett announced wage cuts, the second round of wage reductions for employees within eight months. Several days later, according to Baltimore newspapers, Garrett assured the B&O Board of Directors that the road had made sufficient profit to allow a ten percent dividend to stockholders.

B&O Workers Take Action
On July 16, 1877, facing the impact of additional lost wages and bitter at the apparent collusion among various railroads, B&O workers took action. In Baltimore, several firemen abandoned trains in busy Camden Yards, causing delays and confusion along the rails and fear among railroad officials.

Farther west in the B&O yards and relay station in Martinsburg, West Virginia, some workers moved engines into the roundhouse and refused to run any trains until wages were restored. No property was destroyed, and not all railroad employees had joined the strike, but B&O officials urged West Virginia’s Gov. Henry Mathews to call out the state militia. Finding that many of the militia were railroad workers or men possibly in sympathy for the strikers, Mathews urged President Rutherford B. Hayes to send in federal troops to get the trains running again.

In Cumberland, Maryland, a major B&O yard, sensationalized reports indicated that railroad workers, often said to be accompanied by local miners and Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Canal workers, were prowling Cumberland bent on violence and destruction. A train from Martinsburg, operated by federal troops, was stopped at the Queen City Station in Cumberland, where local railroad men and unemployed rolling mill workers uncoupled cars and taunted the soldiers. Later reports told of 500 to 600 strikers and sympathizers looting boxcars with perishable goods in the Cumberland yards.

Maryland National Guard Meets Mob
Bowing to the pressure of B&O officials, who wanted a quick response to what they were touting as an unruly mob determined to stop all rail traffic, Gov. John Lee Carroll called out the Maryland National Guard. On the evening of July 20, National Guardsmen from the Fifth and Sixth Regiments of the Maryland National Guard were preparing to go to Cumberland. As both regiments began their march from their respective armories to Camden Station, they were met by thousands of protesters shouting sympathy for the strikers and voicing opposition to the use of armed troops in support of railroad companies.

As the elite Fifth Regiment marched south along Eutaw Street in the city’s west side, a mob of several thousand pelted it with stones and street debris, some thrown from upper-story windows. Only by parting the mob with fixed bayonets did the soldiers arrive safely and without serious incident at the station.

People Killed and Wounded
The Sixth Regiment did not fare as well. As the troops prepared to march to Camden Station from their armory at Front and Fayette Streets on the east side of town, a mob of more than 2,000 confronted them. Their march along Baltimore Street turned into a running fight as they tried to dodge rocks and paving stones, sometimes finding themselves in hand-to-hand fighting. Several times they fired into the crowd to try to maintain order. By the time they reached Camden Station, at least ten civilians had been killed and perhaps several dozen wounded. Some of the casualties had been merely bystanders. The clash with the protesters also took a toll on the soldiers. Some reports claimed that over half of the regiment deserted on its way to the station.

By evening, Camden Station was under siege from 15,000 to 20,000 angry protesters. Inside were the remnants of the National Guard along with Gov. Carroll, Baltimore Mayor Ferdinand Latrobe, local police officials, and numerous B&O employees and officials.

Rioters pelted the building with stones and empty liquor bottles (the contents of which had been consumed by the crowd). Rumors abounded that they were going to destroy railroad property, burn the station, and then move into the city setting fires and looting. Some track was indeed torn up, and several pieces of rolling stock were destroyed along with part of the station’s passenger platform, and a dispatcher’s office--when strikers sent a locomotive under full steam crashing into the rail yards.

Aftermath
By 1:00 A.M., most of the mob had wandered back home but Gov. Carroll, fearing widespread anarchy, had already wired President Hayes to ask for federal troops. Although there would be several other sporadic and minor incidents over the next few days, most of the major violence was over before dawn of the twenty-first. In the wake of the events in Baltimore, local police, the National Guard, and newly arrived U.S. regulars arrested more than 200 people.

Word of events in Baltimore spread to other cities, where protests and riots claimed more lives and destroyed property. Chicago, St. Louis, and New York all witnessed bloodshed and violence. On July 21 in Pittsburgh, militia units fired on an unarmed crowd of protesters, killing at least 20, including a woman and three small children, and wounding 29. It was several weeks before order was restored. Called the “first national strike” by some, the events of the summer of 1877 foreshadowed later clashes between business and labor, but also paved the way for many of the reforms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

—Thomas Robertson

Community College of Baltimore County--Essex