Let it be declared at the outset, then, that Baltimore is not in any sense to be regarded as a suburb of Washington.  Indeed, considering the two merely as cities situated side by side, and eliminating the highly specialized features of Washington, Baltimore becomes, according to the standards by which American cities are usually compared, the more important city of the two, being greater both in population and in commerce.  In this aspect Baltimore may, perhaps, be pictured as the commercial half of Washington.  And while Washington, as capital of the United States, has certain physical and cosmopolitan advantages, not only over Baltimore, but over every other city on this continent, it must not be forgotten that, upon the other hand, every other city has one vast advantage over Washington, namely, a comparative freedom from politicians.  To be sure, Congress did once move over to Baltimore and sit there for several weeks, but that was in 1776, when the British approached the Delaware in the days before the pork barrel was invented.

As a city Baltimore has marked characteristics.  Though south of Mason and Dixon’s Line, and though sometimes referred to as the “metropolis of the South” (as is New Orleans also), it is in character neither a city entirely northern nor entirely southern, but one which partakes of the qualities of both; where, in the words of Sidney Lanier, “the climates meet,” and where northern and southern thought and custom meet, as well.  This has long been the case.  Thus, although slaves were held in Baltimore before the Civil War, a strong abolitionist society was formed there during Washington’s first Administration, and the sentiment of the city was thereafter divided on the slavery question.  Thus also, while the two candidates of the divided Democratic party who ran against Lincoln for the presidency in 1860 were nominated at Baltimore, Lincoln himself was nominated there by the Union-Republican party in 1864.

Speaking of the blending of North and South in Baltimore, you will, of course, remember that the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was attacked by a mob as it passed through the city on the way to the Civil War.  The regiment arrived in Baltimore at the old President Street Station, which was then the main station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and which, now used as a freight station, looks like an old war-time woodcut out of Harper’s Weekly.  It was the custom in those days to hitch horses to passenger coaches which were going through and draw them across town to the Baltimore & Ohio Station; but when it was attempted thus to transport the northern troops a mob gathered and blocked the Pratt Street bridge over Jones’s Falls, forcing the soldiers to leave the cars and march through Pratt Street, along the water front, where they were attacked.  It is, however, a noteworthy fact that Mayor Brown of Baltimore bravely preceded the troops and attempted to stop the rioting.  A few days later the city was occupied by northern troops, and the warship Harriet Lane anchored at a point off Calvert Street, whence her guns commanded the business part of town.  After this there was no more serious trouble.  Moreover, it will be remembered that though Maryland was represented by regiments in both armies, the State, torn as it was by conflicting feeling, nevertheless held to the Union.