Review - " Northern Duty, Southern Heart: George Proctor Kane's Civil War " by H. Leon Greene

[Northern Duty, Southern Heart: George Proctor Kane's Civil War by H. Leon Greene (McFarland, 2023). Softcover, photos, maps, illustrations, appendix, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:ix,239/300. ISBN:978-1-4766-8961-6. $45]

Today's readers have been gainfully exposed to numerous specialist examinations of the complex attitudes and responses of Border State citizens to secession, Civil War, wider Union war aims (including emancipation and black army recruitment), and wartime curtailment of the civil rights of noncombatants. Through all that a much more nuanced, expansive, and multi-layered picture of Civil War-era duty and loyalty has emerged. According to H. Leon Greene, author of the new biography Northern Duty, Southern Heart: George Proctor Kane's Civil War, many of those internal conflicts were embodied in the person of the controversial Baltimore Police Marshal whose actions in 1861 achieved widespread notoriety.

Civic-mindedness is one aspect of Kane's character that permeates Greene's cradle to grave study. A Baltimore native, Kane, the son of a Northern Irish Presbyterian immigrant, was active in Whig politics. His commitment to government reform, though perhaps most prominently put forth during his troubled postwar term as the city's mayor, emerged early on when, in his capacity as Port Collector, he refused to fire competent Democratic employees and replace them with patronage appointments from his own party. Before the war, Kane was a successful businessman, Hibernian Society president and fundraiser, and patron of the arts. In the last capacity, he rubbed elbows with the Booth acting family. Some have claimed links between Kane, J.W. Booth, and the Lincoln assassination, but, while confirming that Kane and Booth were acquainted with each other, Greene uncovered no evidence of Kane's involvement in the plot.

As Greene documents in the book, Kane, like many other prominent citizens, became heavily involved in the Maryland militia during the late-antebellum period, cultivating associations with a number of Baltimore companies. He was also a member and vice-president of a Baltimore volunteer firefighting company. In discussing that part of Kane's life, Greene provides an excellent overview of the rowdy nature of volunteer firefighting in the city, and the frequently violent rivalries that emerged between companies. The author credits Kane, who clearly recognized the need for a better and more modern system of fire safety, with being an early, though unsuccessful, advocate for a paid professional fire department for the city.

In addition to painting a vivid picture of the ignoble contributions of firefighting companies to Baltimore street violence, the book also discusses the street gangs (the infamous "Plug-Uglies" among them) and political turf wars that furthered Baltimore's justly earned national image during the antebellum period as "Mobtown." Through coercion and violence, these gangs became intimately involved in the electoral process in the city, and Greene reveals the links between the embarrassing citywide disorder that occurred during the 1856 election and the creation of the City Reform Association with redoubled policing efforts aimed toward restoring order and erasing Baltimore's negative image. Kane eventually was appointed Marshal of the Baltimore Police in 1860, and Greene thoroughly documents the ways in which Marshal Kane transformed the police department into a disciplined force that successfully maintained peace and order during the 1860 presidential election. What a difference four years made, and Greene persuasively credits Kane for being the principal force behind the dramatic change.

Among the blackest charges cited by critics of Kane's character were contemporary allegations that he aimed to facilitate Lincoln's assassination by underperforming his protection duties when the president-elect passed through Baltimore. Kane's pro-Southern sympathies were well-known, but he also was highly regarded by those who knew him to be a duty-bound individual. Greene tends to give Kane the benefit of the doubt when it comes to assessing the validity of accusations leveled against the Marshal by Pinkerton agents and their underworld informants. That Kane argued against a large escort (and further claimed that the alleged Baltimore plots were not very credible threats) can be interpreted in different ways. Critics charged that Kane's proposal would provide an illusion of protection while paving the way for assassins to reach the president while Kane's supporters could see wisdom in a smaller escort being much less likely to create friction and attract violence. Honest minds can differ on the matter, but ultimately Greene adopts a defensible non-committal position that we can never know what was truly in Kane's mind and heart during that time.

Kane's detractors also accused him of maliciously hindering the safety of Washington by failing to protect federal volunteers that would pass through Baltimore on their way to reinforcing the capital. The Baltimore Riot of April 19, 1861 and the subsequent decision to burn major railroad bridges leading into the city to deny further passage of military forces through the heart of the city are often cited as defining points of Kane's conception of duty. As with many aspects of Kane's character, assessment is complicated. Kane would be praised by both sides for his conduct during the riot. Effusive testimonials from Sixth Massachusetts soldiers lauded Kane's personal bravery and willingness to risk his own life after he openly and repeatedly placed himself and his policemen between soldiers and rioters, threatening to open fire on the latter if they continued to violently assault the former.

Much more controversy surrounds Kane's involvement in the railroad bridge burning, the decision-making process of which remains a topic of dispute [citing the gravity of the decision, the author is appropriately skeptical of later claims by the Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor that they did not order Kane to do so]. Then and now, Kane's direct association with the bridge destruction is often specified as proof of disloyal actions. Kane himself claimed that severing the rail links was done to save lives, civilian and soldier alike, and with his knowledge and experience of the city's mob potential perhaps no one else was in a more informed position to make that judgment. Detractors are free to come to a very different and just as reasonable conclusion. After the riot, Kane sent a plea to friend, fellow Marylander, and future Confederate general Bradley Johnson urging him to forward armed men to Baltimore to help oppose any future passage of federal troops through the city.  Greene acknowledges differing viewpoints but remains generally reluctant to judge Kane harshly on the matter of the bridges.

Union authorities at the time, though, had had enough of Kane and other Maryland officials suspected of disloyalty, and the Marshal was arrested along with the mayor and a group of state legislators. Closely held within the walls of a series of prison forts in Maryland, New York, and Massachusetts between June 1861 and November 1862, Kane was denied legal representation and never came to trial, his release from Fort Warren, in Kane's own view, just as arbitrary as his initial arrest. Described in the book, Kane's secretive hoarding of weapons in Baltimore was one of the most damning allegations leading to his arrest. While Kane maintained that the weapons were a legal arms cache intended for use by the police and militia, Union authorities accused him of holding them in readiness for distribution to anti-government forces or invading Confederates. Kane maintained that the arms were hidden to prevent their being stolen by extralegal forces, but Greene agrees that the extra measures taken toward concealing the weapons was at the very least eyebrow-raising. In addition to documenting Kane's own personal experiences, Greene's extensive account of Kane's imprisonment offers informative details and broader insights into the housing and treatment of political prisoners in the North.

Embittered by his long prison experience, Kane fled to Canada, where he offered to help with clandestine Confederate operations originating from there. Later, in Richmond, Kane became one of the strongest advocates for Maryland's Confederate soldiers, lobbying tirelessly yet unsuccessfully for a more consolidated reorganization of Marylanders within the army in order to enhance the overall welfare of the soldiers, which suffered under their "orphan" status. After the war, Kane eventually returned to his beloved Baltimore, but his reform-minded term as mayor of the city was sabotaged by the very poor health that would kill him in 1878 at the age of 60.

In the end, Leon Greene's Northern Duty, Southern Heart successfully invites readers to revisit with fresh eyes history's treatment of how George P. Kane reconciled his personal sympathies with his public duties. Not everyone will agree with the author's characterization of Kane's sense of duty (and those less charitably disposed can find reasons to disagree with many elements of it), but Greene's thoughtful study represents yet another example of the many ways in which the complex hierarchy of loyalties held by so many Border State individuals offer a fascinating contrast to the less complicated views expressed by the majority of their fellow citizens on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line. Beyond its biographical value, Greene's study also offers significant insights and observations into Baltimore's turbulent antebellum social and political history, Maryland's early Civil War experience, and the treatment of political prisoners held by the U.S. government during the conflict.