Civil War
The C&O Canal and the US Civil War
Canalling on the Border between North and South
by Timothy R. Snyder
After Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate forces on April 14, 1861, President Lincoln issued proclamation that called for 75,000 troops to suppress the rebellion. Lincoln’s appeal for volunteers caused much of the upper South to secede, including Virginia, which did so on April 17. A day later, Virginia state militia seized the U.S. armory and rifle-works facilities at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The canal sat just across the river on Maryland soil.
On April 24, a party of Virginia cavalry approached two canal boats loaded with grain at Berlin (now Brunswick), Maryland, and seized them under the authority of the commanding officer at Harpers Ferry. The horsemen took the boats downriver to Point of Rocks and transferred the grain onto B&O Railroad cars for shipment to Harpers Ferry. The owner of the boats, Charles Wenner, appealed to the sheriff of Frederick County, Maryland, for help. The sheriff was powerless to intervene, however, and referred the matter to Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks. In another instance, the Confederates seized a boatload of salt. Hicks would soon receive a petition from a group of citizens from Montgomery County, Maryland, asking for protection of their grain on the canal.1
Since interference with canal navigation was only one of a number of border violations committed by the Virginia troops from Harpers Ferry, Governor Hicks referred the matters to the Maryland General Assembly. On May 1 he also wrote a letter to Virginia Governor John Letcher, complaining of the hostilities: "Cattle, grain, &c, &c have been seized; canal boats laden with produce have been detained, private homes have been forcibly entered; and unoffending citizens have been insulted and threatened." On May 3 Letcher replied that he desired to "cultivate amicable relations" with Maryland, especially since he hoped the state would ultimately join the Confederacy. He wrote that he had asked the garrison’s commander, Col. Thomas J. Jackson, to respond to the allegations.2
Jackson, a young professor from the Virginia Military Institute, had taken command at Harpers Ferry on April 29. Evidence shows that he required canal boat captains to obtain passes to take their boats past Harpers Ferry. In his postwar memoir, Henry Kyd Douglas wrote that while serving at Harpers Ferry, his first duty was as a sentinel along the canal towpath in Maryland. One Confederate pass, signed by Jackson aide James W. Massie, was published in the May 23, 1861 Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser: "Alexander Dent has permission to remove his family from Sandy Hook to Montgomery county, Maryland, on canal boat E. Reid, without molestation, the said boat to return empty."3
Jackson replied to Governor Letcher’s request on May 6, writing that the previous post commander had ordered the detention of canal boats on the grounds that they were delivering provisions to Washington. Jackson added that he had since countermanded that order and that no boats had been detained by his men. The conflict along the border and at the port city of Alexandria, Virginia may have deterred many boatmen from trying to navigate past the Ferry, but clearly few boat captains succeeded in obtaining a pass from the Confederates. In March the company collected over $16,000 in tolls over the entire length of the canal in only two weeks of boating; in April the canal was largely closed due to flooding, but in May the company collected only $657 in tolls, and in June only $206.4
Meanwhile, the Committee on Federal Relations of the Maryland House of Delegates also began to investigate the border depredations. It found the seizure of Charles Wenner’s grain by Virginia troops troubling, and noted that it threatened to undermine friendly relations between the two states. It appointed a commissioner, Outerbridge Horsey of Frederick County, to proceed to Richmond to investigate the incidents and to arrange a settlement with Virginia. In the end, Virginia agreed to compensate Wenner for the grain that had been seized. On June 4, 1861 he received $1,693.75 for 2,825 bushels of oats, wheat and corn. He was not reimbursed for transportation costs, detention of his boats or tolls.5
Horsey also investigated the concerns of the citizens from Montgomery County. He found that canal traffic had not been molested by Virginia troops, although he learned that citizens from Seneca Mills were fearful that the Confederates might do so. In his report, Horsey wrote: "Your commissioner may be permitted to remark that the people of the western counties of the State adjacent to the canal are much interested in preserving from molestation the trade along its lines of navigation, and he has been particularly solicitous in removing all obstacles which threatened it." He added that he was confident that Virginia’s authorities would not permit further interference with the canal trade.6
Any agreement that Horsey had made with Virginia’s authorities would soon break down, however, as the war advanced beyond the ability of the two states to negotiate a settlement of further border strife. For the C&O Canal Company—and for the nation—darker days lay ahead.
Notes
1.
Timothy R. Snyder, "Border Strife on the Upper Potomac: Confederate
Incursions from Harpers Ferry, April–June, 1861," Maryland Historical
Magazine 97: 82–84, 87
2.
Ibid, 85–86
3.
Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall (reprint, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, n.d.), 5; Baltimore
American and Commercial Advertiser, May 23, 1861.
4.
Snyder, "Border Strife," 86, 93.
5.
Ibid, 85, 88.
6.
Ibid, 87; Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Delegates, in Extra Session
(Frederick: Elihu S. Riley, 1861), 177, 178–179.
(This article was published in the June 2011 issue of Along The Towpath, the newsletter of the C&O Canal Association.)
