The Baltimore Riots

American mobs and rioting was not a nineteenth century Baltimorean invention. The colonial American mobs opposing British imperial measures was similar to the bread riots described by E.P. Thompson; crowds acted to re-establish “just price,” set by custom and ancient law, and violated by grain merchants. Occasionally a mob would destroy property, as seen in the famous Boston Tea Party or in the destruction of Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s house in 1765. However, the mob rarely acted violently towards individual persons with the intent to kill or inflict harm. Also, unlike their British counterparts, American mobs have yet to target civilian or non-governmental entities like they did in Baltimore in 1812. The only analogous event on record

As previously noted, Mayor Johnson was present before the mobs on June 22 and July 27-28, pleading with them to disperse. Following the June 22 destruction of Hanson’s office, Mayor Johnson and city magistrates assembled all of the city’s officials and constables for a parade through the streets. Their intent was to show the laborers and other mob participants that the city’s elite was united against further acts of public disorder and destruction. The laborers were unmoved by the elite’s display and continued to voice their displeasure against Federalists supporters who spoke out condemning the June 22 event. At this point, in Baltimore city, the working class denied paternalistic authority and asserted a new, purely democratic order of society where their mob justice would enforce the “laws of nature and reason” not the Baltimore government or

Hanson and his Federalists affiliates on the two separate occasions. However, the same forces were present in other protests and mob functions in colonial and post-revolution America. Yet, those mobs rarely resorted to violence, especially murder and merciless beatings. One possible explanation as to why the mobs in Baltimore unexpectedly turned violent is that the European immigrant population of Baltimore City, united around a shared hatred of the British, developed powerful bonds in the preceding years because the city was founded on economic growth, not ancient social hierarchies or familial relations. There were reports of inter-Irish fighting in the midst of the riots, but German, Dutch, French, and Irish laborers in Baltimore City worked together on the docks and in the various public works projects. They were treated and paid equally based off of their labor, not ethnic background. While their home countries were at war with each other, the immigrant workers in Baltimore were not divided, they were united on their own defined terms with their own agenda. This awakening of the working class in Baltimore, although for nefarious purposes, exemplifies the origins of populist movements that would sweep the nation in the subsequent decades. The Baltimore Riots fundamentally changed how elites, government