Rockville, Portrait of a City.
Hillsboro Press, Franklin, Tennessee, 2001.
Chapter 4, p. 46.
© City of Rockville
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, p. 46. © City of Rockville |
The Rockville Expedition
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.