Civil Unrest and the War of 1812

Civil unrest in this country is nothing new. Folks have been rioting here since the white people first annoyed the Indians. Sometimes the protestors are opposed by the police and the civil authorities, the way they were in the nineteen sixties, the way they are today in the Occupy Wall Street movement. At other times, the civil authorities ignore the protestors, even cooperate with them.

This is how it was in the first Baltimore Riot, when the very first casualty of the War of 1812 was created by a protestor dropping a rock on the foot of a passerby. The police were absent. The mayor was there, passing among the rioters, remonstrating gently with them.

What were the people of Baltimore upset about? Not the war. They were delighted when the country declared war on Britain on June 18, 1812. Federalists were against the war, but those of the Democratic-Republican persuasion were hot to get started fighting. In Baltimore, a city of 41,000 and growing apace, many of the residents were French, German, and Irish immigrants, and most were Democratic-Republicans. Not war protestors.

No, they were mad at Alexander Contee Hanson, who with his partner Jacob Wagner had dared to denounce the war in his newspaper, the Federal Republican. They began to gather at Hanson's newspaper offices on Gay Street as soon as the despised issue of his paper hit the streets, and by nightfall they were in such a passion that they tore the building down. Hanson and Wagner were not there, and so escaped a tarring and feathering.

But Hanson came back to Baltimore the following month and published a new issue of the Federal Republican, denouncing the Republicans of Baltimore as tools of Washington politicians and a rival publisher (the Baltimoreans had been rioting ever since he left). He published his street address. Two thousand rioters showed up to attack Hanson and his supporters; when they rushed the house one of the attackers was shot to death. The mayor and the police took the Federalists to jail, promising them safety, but the rioters broke into the jail and attacked them in an orgy of violence that some compared to the French Reign of Terror. One of Hanson's friends was killed and several others tortured and dreadfully maimed. Hanson himself was badly wounded.

We hope things don't come to that on Wall Street. As in Chicago in 1969, it can be tough sometimes to see who is doing the actual rioting. If past events are any guide, it's going to get worse before it gets better.