Cannons, generals and soldiers were unquestionably critical components of the Union war effort, but another piece of the puzzle was the Yankees’ ability to use railroads to quickly move everything from hardtack to siege artillery to points where they were needed most. One iron highway in particular, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, helped determine the course of the war by allowing the North to shuttle men to and from the Western and Eastern theaters and by bringing foodstuffs grown in the Midwest to Federal armies in the East.

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By 1861, the B&O stretched from Baltimore in the east to Wheeling, Va., and the Ohio River in the west. The B&O owned more than 75 locomotives, 2,000 freight cars and in excess of 100 passenger cars. Company coffers bulged with more than $30 million in assets.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the North and South each claimed the railroad. The B&O presented two equally important problems to the Union and the Confederacy. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy needed to maintain possession of the rail line’s tracks in northwestern Virginia in order to prevent the capture of strategically important Harpers Ferry. Meanwhile, the North was anxious to keep the Confederates from commanding a single mile of track on the most important northern railroad extending west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Baltimore & Ohio President John Garrett, a Virginian by birth, made no secret of his affinity for the South and often referred to Confederate leaders as his ‘Southern friends.’ When Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler arrested Confederate supporters during his occupation of Baltimore in the first days of the war, executives who used the B&O to transport goods realized their commercial and financial ties lay with the North. Additionally, Baltimore’s north-central location physically precluded the B&O from supporting the Confederacy. So when President Abraham Lincoln and the Northern states called, John Garrett answered with his full support. The B&O stayed with the Union.

Despite that decision, the B&O came under suspicion from both the United States and the Confederacy. In April 1861, Garrett received an anonymous letter containing threats that pro-Confederate forces promised to destroy tracks, burn bridges and demolish company buildings if the B&O continued to transport Union soldiers. Within a week, Garrett read an editorial in the pro-Union Wheeling Intelligencer criticizing the railroad’s willingness to transport Confederate soldiers from western Maryland and Virginia. Later in the summer, Secretary of War Simon Cameron warned Garrett that transporting Southern soldiers constituted a trea-sonous act. During the entire war, John Garrett’s B&O came under continual attack in both Northern and Southern editorial columns.

On April 19, 1861, six days after Fort Sumter surrendered, Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. When word spread across Baltimore that B&O officials had approved a plan to transport soldiers from the 6th Massachusetts Infantry through the city to Washington, D. C., pro-Southern sympathizers protested to Mayor George W. Brown and Governor Thomas H. Hicks. Soon after, John Garrett received a note from the mayor of Charles Town, Va., stating that in the event the B&O transported the 6th Massachusetts over its main stem, Virginia militia forces stationed near Charles Town stood prepared to destroy the carrier’s bridges at Harpers Ferry.

Garrett refused to back down from the threats and ordered company officers to ensure the 6th Massachusetts kept its schedule and boarded B&O cars bound for the short trip to Washington. After disembarking from cars belonging to the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad, the 6th Massachusetts moved toward the B&O’s main terminus located at Camden Yards. A rock-throwing, pro-Southern mob followed the soldiers. Outside the main station, shots rang out and by the time the firing ceased, nine civilians and four soldiers lay dead, with dozens more wounded or injured.

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