2022
Protecting the Capitol: 1861 & 2021 r i c h a r d p. h o w e , j r .
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n April 19, 1861, about 200 soldiers from Lowell were attacked in Baltimore while en route to Washington, D.C., to protect the U.S. government from those who sought to overthrow it. The Lowell men were part of the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment that had rapidly mobilized and moved out in response to President Abraham Lincoln’s desperate call for militia troops—the National Guard of the 19th century—to hurry to Washington to help safeguard the government. The members of the mob in Baltimore that attacked the troops were sympathetic to those in the South who had revolted against the established government and sought to prevent the northern troops from getting to Washington to assist in its defense. As a contingent of the soldiers marched down Baltimore’s Pratt Street in transit from the city’s northern train station to its southern one, the mob assaulted the troops with sticks, stones, bricks, and then guns, killing four of the soldiers and injuring several dozen more. The soldiers fired back at their attackers, killing twelve of them. The events in Baltimore on that April 19 are memorialized in paintings, woodcuts, etchings and drawings but there are no photographs. Had there been, they would have looked much like the scenes we witnessed on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, when a violent mob attacked, overwhelmed, and injured members of the Capitol police force in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. The similarities between the two deadly events are many: in both cases, a riotous mob sought to reverse the outcome of an election. In both cases, racism was the foundation of the grievances of the mob. In both cases, some government officials and some members of the police and military provided support and encouragement to the mob. In both cases, the mob was incited by demagogues who sought the overthrow of the duly elected government. And when the surviving members of the Sixth Mass finally made it to Washington, D.C., they were quartered in the U.S. Capitol, just as thousands of National Guard troops are today. There were differences: The mob of 1861 was clad in wool and cotton while the mob of 2021 wore kevlar and ripstop nylon. The mob of 1861 lacked the audacity to directly attack the U.S. Capitol (although they had the capability to attack and seize it) while the mob of 2021 violently assaulted the seat of our democracy and our representatives within it. But the biggest difference was that in 1861, the president of the United States stood firmly against the mob, called them out for their traitorous behavior, and mobilized the nation to put down the insurrection even though that effort took four years and cost
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The Lowell Review
