Baltimore City Jail DBQ Essay

On July 28, 1812, nine men huddled together inside the Baltimore City Jail, not because they were being detained for criminal malfeasance, but for their own protection from the mob of 1,500 angry Baltimoreans gathered outside. The men inside the jail, led my Alexander C. Hanson, were members or affiliates of the unpopular Federalist newspaper, The Federal Republican. The crowd outside was predominantly composed of European immigrant wage laborers from Ireland who flocked to Baltimore following the Revolutionary War. Without warning, the back door to the jail swung open and the angry mob rushed inside and descended upon Hanson and his cohorts. As described by Isaac Dickson, a Justice of the Peace in Baltimore City, “there a scene of horror
During the years preceding the War of 1812, American trade rights, sovereignty, and neutrality were infringed upon and largely ignored by Britain and France. The laborers sided with the Democratic-Republicans who sought to assert American sovereignty through hostilities with the British because war aligned with their nationalist and economic interests. A local Federalist newspaper that espoused neutrality and unequal trade with the British was met with violence from the laborers who despised British meddling with American trade. The political and economic motivations were each necessary causes for the violent event, but were not individually sufficient. Most importantly, based off of first-hand accounts of wage laborers present during the riots, the origins of a working class consciousness emerged in Baltimore City, mixed with the turbulent political and economic factors, and produced the violent riots of 1812. This paper argues that the peaceful demonstrations, similar to the ones common in the early republic, unexpectedly turned violent in Baltimore City in 1812 because of the interaction between Federalist anti-war newspaper editorials and the local Democratic-Republican dominated and nationalistic subsistence wage