Local Historian Account
An account by local historian, Eileen McGuckian.

McGuckian, Eileen S. Rockville, Portrait of a City. Hillsboro Press, Franklin, Tennessee, 2001. Chapter 4, pp. 46-47. © City of Rockville

America's centuries-old debate over slavery reached a climax in the presidential election of November 1860.  Froma field of four candidates, Rockville (and Maryland) split the overwhelming majority of its votes in favor of Southern Democrat John Breckenridge and John Bell of the Constitutional Unionist Party.  The nation, however, selected Republican Abraham Lincoln, and set into motion a series of rapid-fire events as the election results came in.  Starting with South Carolina in December 1860, states south of the Mason-Dixon Line began to secede from the Union.

Political leaders of Montgomery County met at the courthouse on January 1, 1861 "to confer with each other upon the perilous condition of the country, and to adopt such measures as the exigencies of the times, in their wisdom, may demand."  Two prominent Rockville attorneys with contrary opinions, Democrat John Brewer and Unionist John T. Vinson, attempted to navigate the debate, and pro-Union Richard Johns Bowie called for calm and patience.  Resolutions were proposed along party lines, and attendees suggested committees which would formulate other resolutions.  The assembled, who voted 133 to 131 that Maryland should make every attempt to remain in the Union, agreed that the federal government must continue to protect the institution and practice of slaveholding.

The Confederate States of America (CSA) organized in February, and on March 4, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated president of the United States.  On April 12, the rebels fired on Fort Sumter in Charlestown harbor.  Three days later, Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers and declared the ports of all seceded states under blockade.  Maryland entered the fray on April 19, when local citizens attacked Federal troops as the changed train sin Baltimore.  Union troops occupied the city for the remainder of the war.

On April 22, Governor Thomas Hicks called a special session of the Maryland General Assembly in Frederick.  Despite the 1860 legislature's resolution to cast Maryland's lot with the South if the Union were dissolved.  Hick's attempted to juggle pressures, rumors and the highly charged atmosphere.  Marylanders in and out of public office debated secession, but no consensus existed.  In the end, Hick's support of the Union and Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, a bold measure that enabled the military to arrest anyone in the General Assembly suspected of disloyalty and hold them indefinitely, kept Maryland firmly with the North.

Lincoln also acted quickly to protect the city of Washington .  Federal troops moved into Baltimore, Annapolis, Cumberland, Havre de Grace and points along the railroad.  By June 1861 they occupied Rockville in a military action known as the Rockville Expedition.  One of the first actions of Union soldiers was to disarm the Rockville Riflemen, a militia unit formed in December 1859 and captained by pro-South State's Attorney William Veirs Bouic.

From June 10 to July 7, troops under the command of Col. Charles P. Stone raided homes and shops of suspected "secesh" Rockville residents, seizing weapons and arresting outspoken anti-Unionists.  Stone then moved to Darnestown, Seneca, and Poolesville after leaving detachments in Rockville to guard routes into Washington.  By that time, approximately thirty-eight thousand Union infantry, artillery and cavalry were stationed in Montgomery County.

By the end of June 1861, the field at the top of the Rockville Pike near Saint Mary's Church had become a camping ground for Union troops assigned to the area or passing through.  The nearby fairgrounds were strewn with tents, livestock, campfires and New Englanders who had never traveled so far South.

Union soldiers wrote home about Rockville.  "The regiment ... encamped upon the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, a most delightful place which they christened 'Camp Lincoln'.  The first impression produced upon the people of Rockville seemed to be one of fear and consterntation.... the prevailing sentiment fo the people were secesh.  But a single Union flag was to seen in Rockville and that was displayed in the private yard of Rev. L.S. Russell, a rector of the Episcopal Church...."  Despite the prevailing Southern sentiment, a new Yorker noted that the people of Rockville "showed many courtesies to the members of the regiment during the brief encampment."  Another soldeir described Rockville as "by far the prettiest village these blue clad wanderes had seen since passing through New Jersey."

Not all of the descriptions were flattering, however.  A reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote:

The main route from Washington up passes through Rockville, a small and dilapidated looking town of four or five hundred inhabitants....  Rockville contains, besides some four "hotels", the ruins of a jail, a newspaper office (alas! the poor printer), a couple lawyer's offices, courthouse and a prominent looking brick house, in which our informant said there resided "three old maids, who wouldn't marry the best man who ever lived, if he offered hisself to 'em."

It is unnecessary to describe this venerable town.  It does not differ from the generality of small villages in the interior of Maryland, being made up of the usual number of "setters" on the tavern stoops, decrepid colored persons, and an air of monotony that is painful to one who has been accustomed to the din of city life....

The courthouse hosted numerous meeting in 1861.  As most Montgomery County citizens favored the South, the predominant subject was dissolving Maryland's ties with the Union.  The New York Times described a meeting on September 7 where seccessionists elected delegates to a convention in Baltimore.  Rockville attorneys William Veirs Bouic and George Peter, editor Matthew Fields, wheelwright Melchisdec Greenm and Ben Cooley, the mail contractor, attended, as did "rampant Secessionist" John W. Jones, a Rockville merchant whose building housed the telegraph office.  The Times wrote of secessionists "armed with revolvers and knives, striking terror to the hearts of the quiet Union men."

A few days later, Union soldiers arrested attorneys Bouic and Brewer in their Rockville homes on the charge of "having attended a disloyal meeting" and carried them under guard to Gen Nathaniel Banks near Darnestown.  After their imprisonment for three weeks in Washington without a hearing, U.S. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair obtained their release.

Cousins and staunch Unionists Richard Johns Bowie and Allen Bowie Davis started a local newspaper in late 1861.  Although open only a year, the National Union rivaled the Sentinel's vigorous support ofhte Southern cause.  When publication ceased, Matthew Fields suggested that the "nondescript offspring of the Abolition part of this county" went out of business for "want of proper pabulum."