George Proctor Kane

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (October 2007)

George P. Kane, Mayor of Baltimore, Maryland, 1877-78

The image of Marshall Kane in Harper's Weekly, July 13, 1861, p.445, c.1., reprinted in Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (1866 as Harper's Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion; 1894; reprint 1977), p. 88.

George P. Kane's Arrest at his home in Baltimore, three o'clock a.m. Thursday, June 27th, 1861

George Proctor Kane (1820-1878) was Mayor of Baltimore, Maryland from November 5, 1877, to his death on June 23, 1878. He is best known for his role as Marshall of Police during the Baltimore riot of 1861^[1] and his subsequent incarceration in Fort McHenry and Ft. Warren prisons without benefit of habeas corpus. His position as Marshall of Police and his Southern sympathies were two of many factors in Abraham Lincoln's decision in February 1861 to pass through Baltimore surreptitiously on his way to Washington to be inaugurated, in order to avoid a possible assassination attempt. Despite his politics, Kane was instrumental in providing protection and an escort for Mrs. Lincoln on her arrival in Baltimore in February 1861 on her way to the inauguration of her husband, who had preceded her.

[edit] Early Political Life

Kane was born in Baltimore in 1820 and at an early age entered the grain and grocery business. He was commissioned an ensign in the Independent Grays, a military organization, and afterward commanded the Eagle Artillery and the Montgomery Guards. He was later Colonel of the First Maryland Regiment of Artillery.

Mrs. Kane was Miss Anna Griffith, daughter of Capt. John Griffith, of Dorchester County, Maryland.

Kane was (as a matter of course, since he had several political offices) much identified with the politics of the City of Baltimore. He was originally an adherent of the Old Whig Party and an active and enthusiastic supporter of Henry Clay as shown by the fact that he was Grand Marshal of the parade of the Whig Young Men's National Convention held at Baltimore May 1st, 1844, which ratified the nomination of Mr. Clay for the Presidency of the United States. The future Mayor of Baltimore was then but twenty-four years old. In 1847, during the famine in Ireland, he was very active in relief work. At this period he was president of the Hibernian Society. With several others Mr. Kane purchased the old Exchange (site of the present Custom-house) and sold the property to the United States Government, which, upon remodeling the buildings, used them for years as the Custom-house and Post-office. He was active in the Old Volunteer Fire Department and president of the Old Independent Fire Company. Historians credit Colonel Kane with suggesting a paid steam fire department.

In 1849 he was appointed Collector of the Port of Baltimore.^[2]

In the 1850s, Baltimore was a city mired in political corruption and mob violence. As a result, the Maryland legislature embarked upon a reform movement, which included finding a stong new Marshall of Police. Kane filled the bill, becoming Marshall of Police in 1860. According to historian John Scharf, "It is impossible to overrate the change that the organization of an efficient police force wrought in the condition of the city."^[3] Mayor George Brown later wrote that the entire police force "had been raised to a high degree of discipline and efficiency under the command of Marshal Kane."^[4]

[edit] Kane and the Baltimore Plot

In February of 1861, Detective Alan Pinkerton, working on behalf of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, uncovered what he believed to be a plot to assassinate President-elect Lincoln as he journeyed through Baltimore on his way to Washington to begin his first term. Pinkerton presented his findings to Lincoln, which included his belief that Kane, Marshall of Police of Baltimore, was a “rabid rebel”^[5] who could not be trusted to provide security to Mr. Lincoln while in Baltimore. Pinkerton believed that Kane could participate in the plot merely by underperforming in his duties, thereby giving others ample opportunity to carry out their plans, and claimed to have overheard a conversation in a Baltimore hotel in which Kane indicated that he had no intention of providing a police escort for Lincoln.^[6] Baltimore at this time was a hotbed of pro-Southern sympathies. Unlike other cities on the President-elect’s itinerary, including New York, Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Baltimore had planned no official welcome for Lincoln. Pinkerton’s information regarding Kane, along with other information discovered by him, his operatives and others, led to the President-elect’s decision to follow the detective’s advice, changing his travel plans and passing through Baltimore surreptitiously nine hours ahead of his published schedule.^[7]

In 1868, in response to stories then circulating in the press about the Baltimore plot, Kane wrote a lengthy account of his view of the events of Feb. 21-23, 1861. He believed the President and his family would arrive in Baltimore as planned on the North Central Railroad at the Calvert Street Station at 12:30 pm on February 23, and depart on a 3 pm train from the Camden Station on the west side of town. That left two and a half hours to fill in a city in which the President got only about 1000 votes, and most of those, according to Kane, from “the very scum of the city.” In other words, there were no sizable numbers of upper crust Lincoln supporters who might be counted on to rally around the President in a public display, and entertain him, as had happened on the President’s previous stops in New York, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia. Kane came up with a plan, which he implemented, in which John S. Gittings, who owned the North Central Railroad, would travel to Maryland Line, get on the President’s train, and accompany him to Baltimore. Once in Baltimore, the train would make an unscheduled stop at Charles and Bolton Streets, where Kane would meet it with carriages that would carry the President and his family to Gittings’ mansion on Mt. Vernon Place. There a sumptuous meal would be served. This plan avoided the Calvert Street Station altogether and kept the President largely out of view of rabble rousers. According to his own account, Kane carried out his plan exactly, with the only exception being that the President was not aboard the train, having already traveled through Baltimore. Newspaper accounts that described Mrs. Lincoln being met by an unruly crowd in the Calvert Street station were erroneous; she had already alighted from the train.^[8]

[edit] Baltimore riot of 1861

Main article: Baltimore riot of 1861

On April 18, 1861, two companies of US Artillery and four companies of militia arrived from Harrisburg at the Bolton Station, in the northern part of Baltimore. A large crowd assembled at the station, subjecting the militia to abuse and threats. According to the mayor at the time, “An attack would certainly have been made but for the vigilance and determination of the police, under the command of Marshal Kane.”^[9]

Kane and others in Baltimore, knowing the fever pitch of the city, sought to learn about plans for other troops to pass through town, but their telegrams north asking for information were largely ignored, probably at least partly because of Kane's well-known Southern sympathies. So it was on the next day, April 19, that Baltimore authorities had no warning that troops were arriving from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. The first of the troops had arrived at the President Street Station, on the east side of town, and had successfully traveled the one-mile distance along Pratt St. via horse drawn rail cars, to the Camden Yards station on the west side, to continue to Washington. There a disturbance ensued that soon brought the attention of Marshall Kane. His police, according to Mayor Brown, prevented a large and angry crowd “from committing any serious breach of the peace.”^[10] Upon hearing reports that the mobs would attempt to tear up the rails leading toward Washington, Kane dispatched some of his men to protect the tracks.

Meanwhile, the balance of northern troops encountered greater difficulty traversing Pratt Street. Obstructions were placed on the tracks by the crowd and some cars were forced back toward the President Street station. The soldiers attempted to march the distance along Pratt Street, and according to Mayor Brown were met with “shouts and stones, and I think, an occasional pistol shot.”^[11]

The soldiers fired back, and the scene was one of general mayhem. Marshall Kane soon appeared with a group of policemen from the direction of the Camden St. Station, “and throwing themselves in the rear of the troops, they formed a line in front of the mob, and with drawn revolvers kept it back. … Marshal Kane’s voice shouted, “Keep back, men, or I shoot!” This movement, which I saw myself, was gallantly executed, and was perfectly successful. The mob recoiled like water from a rock.”^[12] By the time it was over, four soldiers and twelve civilians were dead. These were the first casualties of the Civil War.

Even though Kane appears to have executed his duties faithfully during these events, and wrote an official account defending his actions [1], there is no question that he was very pronounced in his Southern sympathies. After the riot, Marshall Kane telegraphed to Bradley T. Johnson in Frederick, Md. as follows:

"Streets red with Maryland blood; send expresses over the mountains of Maryland and Virginia for the riflemen to come without delay. Fresh hordes will be down on us tomorrow. We will fight them and whip them, or die."[2]^[13]

This startling telegram produced immediate results. Mr. Johnson, afterwards General in the Confederate Army, came with volunteers from Frederick by special train that night and other county military organizations began to arrive. Virginians were reported hastening to Baltimore.^[14]

[edit] Kane's Arrest

However, after days of excitement and suspense, the upheaval subsided, and soon General Benjamin Butler, with a strong Federal force, took possession of Baltimore’s Federal Hill where he erected extensive fortifications. For the period of the war Baltimore was closely guarded by Northern troops.

Marshall Kane remained in office as head of the police until June 27th, 1861, when he was arrested in the dead of night at his house on St. Paul Street by a detachment of Federal soldiers and taken to Fort McHenry. From there he was sent to Fort Lafayette in New York. From there he wrote a letter to President Lincoln in September, 1861, describing the fever from malaria he contracted at Ft. McHenry, and the inhumane conditions at Fort Lafayette. "Whilst suffering great agony from the promptings of nature and effects of my debility I am frequently kept for a long time at the door of my cell waiting for permission to go to the water-closet owing to the utter indifference of some of my keepers to the ordinary demands of humanity."^[15] Later he was moved to Fort Warren in Boston. In all he was confined for 14 months. He was released in 1862 and went to Montreal.^[16]

[edit] Kane in the Civil War

As the Civil War was beginning, Kane was moved from Fort McHenry to Fort Lafayette, and then to Ft. Columbus, New York. From there he wrote to Secretary of State William Seward in October 1861 asking for a speedy trial and complaining that the conditions at Lafayette had been so bad that he required medical care for "an affection of the heart which I attribute to the nature of my confinement at Lafayette." This heart condition may have precluded his service later on the field of battle for the Confederacy.^[17] Eventually Kane was released and went to Canada.

According to the NY Times obituary of him on June 23, 1878, Kane received a commission on General Robert E. Lee’s staff, and was with Lee at Gettysburg. This seems unlikely; a letter he wrote to Jefferson Davis on July 17, 1863- just two weeks after Gettysburg- is from Canada, where Kane offers his services in organizing an expedition against Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit. His plan was to destroy all shipping, thus "paralyzing the lake commerce."^[18] By November, he writes Davis again from Montreal to report on the failure of a plan to rescue Confederate prisoners at Sandusky Bay.^[19] In Canada in 1864, Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth presented to Confederate officials - including Kane- his plan to kidnap President Lincoln.^[20]

In February 1864 Kane ran the Federal blockade and was soon in Richmond.^[21]In 1864 he published a broadside in which he exhorted Marylanders in the Confederate army to form their own Maryland militias, rather than serve under the flags of other states. On July 20, 1864, he is reported by the Charleston Mercury to be “about to cooperate with our forces then near Baltimore, with 15,000 Maryland recruits." [2]On October 8, 1864 he writes again to Davis, offering to recruit Marylanders to form a corps of heavy artillery, a suggestion that was politely declined.^[22] In March of 1865, he is reported to have been instrumental in acquiring fresh uniforms for Marylanders in the Confederate Army.^[23] In the closing days of the war, he is still writing to Jefferson Davis to report on the movement of troops around Danville, Virginia.^[24]

[edit] After the Civil War

In 1865 Kane entered the tobacco manufacturing business at Danville, Va. Returning to Baltimore he was appointed to the Jones Falls Commission and was elected sheriff by the Democratic party in 1873.

On October 27th, 1877, Kane was elected Mayor having won the Democratic nomination over Ferdinand C. Latrobe.

Mayor Kane was mayor of Baltimore City but a short time (his two-year term would have ended November 3rd, 1879). Ordinances receiving his approval were not numerous. One appropriated money for repairs to the Old City Hall on Holliday near Saratoga street, and transferred this building to the Commissioners of Public Schools to be used for school purposes. Authority to condemn and open Wolfe Street from Monument to North Avenue and Patterson Park Avenue from Oliver Street to North Avenue was granted. A resolution to appoint a committee to urge upon Congress the necessity of constructing a new post-office was approved by Mayor Kane and an ordinance to accept Homewood Park (a part of the present site of Johns Hopkins University) was signed April 8th, 1878; this ordinance however was not carried into effect at that time.

Colonel Kane died, while Mayor, June 23rd, 1878. Ferdinand C. Latrobe was elected to serve the unexpired term.^[25]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Maryland State Archives on line biography, MSA SC 3520-12478, http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/012400/012478/html/msa12478.html
• Evitts, William J., A Matter of Allegiances- Maryland from 1850-1861(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,1974).
• Wilbur F. Coyle, The Mayors of Baltimore (Reprinted from The Baltimore Municipal Journal, 1919) pp. 139-151.
• Cuthbert, Norma, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot 1861, The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, 1949.
• Brown, George William, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April 1861, Johns Hopkins University Press
• Davis, Jefferson, The Papers of Jefferson Davis, edited by Lynda Crist, Louisiana University Press, Baton Rouge, 1999