Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/31

Rh formed in front of it, and then moved in a column of fours toward Camden station. In the meantime the railroad track had been torn up, the bridge on the south dismantled and obstructed, and the march of the troops was necessarily laborious and very slow. The streets were packed with a dense mass of infuriated and excited men, encouraged by the apparent retreat of the troops and the success of the opposition to them. The foremost files had to force their way through this pack of humanity. George William Brown, mayor of the town, with a gallantry and chivalry beyond imagination, for he was a Southern man and certified his fidelity by fourteen months' imprisonment in Union dungeons, placed himself by the side of the captain of the leading company and forced their way through the crowd. No man in Baltimore was more loved, respected and admired than Brown, and his escort of the "invader" was submitted to while he was present. But as soon as he had passed stones began to hail on the column. The officers became rattled. Instead of halting and confronting their enemy, they accelerated the step until the march became a half run. Then a pistol went off; then a musket; then two muskets, three muskets cracked, and citizens fell and died in their tracks. Then reason fled. The mob tore the muskets out of the hands of the soldiers and shot them down. One man jerked the sword out of the hand of an officer and ran him through with it. Frank Ward, a young lawyer, snatched the flag out of the hands of the color bearer and tore it from the lance, and while making off with it was shot through both thighs. He survived though, to serve gallantly as adjutant of the First Maryland regiment, and is alive to-day. Marshal Kane had gone to the Camden station to protect the troops there, when news came of this mêlée on Pratt street. He swung fifty policemen down the street in a double-quick, formed them across the street in the rear of the soldiers and ordered their pursuers to "halt." They halted, and then with the mayor of