Lowell, Massachusetts is typically presented in American history books as the place where the Industrial Revolution changed history for working women. In early 1861, the city was torn by grief when its residents heard that two of their men were among the first to die in the Civil War. Luther Ladd and Addison Whitney were mill workers from the city who were killed by pro-Confederate mobs in Baltimore on April 19, 1861. The two were part of the Sixth Massachusetts Militia Regiment on their way to Washington, D.C. in response to President Lincoln’s call for troops to protect the Capitol from swelling Confederate regiments threatening to launch an attack.
The Civil War began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. On April 17, the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was boarding a train from Boston for Washington just five days after hostilities had broken out. A popular newspaper illustration from April 18, 1861 shows the 6th Massachusetts Regiment being cheered by crowds at the train station in Jersey City, across the Hudson from New York.
When the 6th Massachusetts train reached Baltimore, the troops got off at the President’s Street Station and had to march through the city to the Camden Yards Station on the Southside of the city to catch a train to the Capitol. The regiment’s commander Col. Edward F. Jones told his men:
The regiment will march through Baltimore in column of sections, arms at will. You will undoubtedly be insulted, abused, and, perhaps, assaulted, to which you must pay no attention whatever, but march with your faces to the front, and pay no attention to the mob, even if they throw stones, bricks, or other missiles; but if you are fired upon and any one of you is hit, your officers will order you to fire. Do not fire into any promiscuous crowds, but select, any man whom you may see aiming at you, and be sure you drop him. [The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1. Edited by John Sheldon Moody, et al. Vol. 2. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880, p. 7.]
240 men of the regiment marched in formation through the streets. Almost immediately they were taunted and assaulted. At that time, Baltimore was called “Mob City” because political mobs used violence against abolitionists and Unionists. It is likely that some of these pro-Confederate rioters were called together by existing mob structures to attack the militiamen.
Five of the men of the Massachusetts regiment were killed. Luther Ladd of Lowell was the first one killed. Addison Whitney was another man from Lowell who was killed. Ladd is often referred to as the first Union volunteer to die during the Civil War.
The Civil War monument in Lowell is a fairly simple obelisk in the Mill District honoring Ladd and Whitney. The city did not wait long to memorialize the men, The monument was dedicated on June 17, 1865, while some Confederate ships still had not been surrendered. The monument is called the Ladd-Whitney Monument. In 1908, another Lowell man named Charles Taylor was the subject of a plaque added to the monument. He was also killed on that day. Taylor was a member of the 6th Massachusetts regiment, but he had only caught up with the regiment on April 17 and he was in civilian clothes. Taylor was not buried with the other men of the regiment killed that day. He is in an unmarked grave in Baltimore.
While many of the buildings around the monument were built during the late 19th Century, some from the Civil War Era are still nearby. Luther Ladd was only seventeen when he was murdered. His comrade Addison Whitney was twenty-two years of age. A dozen rioters or civilian bystanders were also killed.
Ladd was from Alexandria, New Hampshire. His three sisters had gone to Lowell to find work and Ladd followed them to get employment at the Lowell Machine Shop. Whitney was from Waldo, Maine working in the spinning room of the Middlesex Corporation. You might have to forget your preconceptions about New England people living where their parents grew up. By the 1850s, New Englanders began crowding into mill towns near water sources to find jobs and make money as part of a new urban working class.
Both of the men joined Company D of the 6th Massachusetts.
An article in Harper’s Weekly identified Ladd as the first Union soldier to die in the war. It said that he was well-read and that he had been following the news from Washington on the Southern states trying to leave the Union. Here is how the Weekly depicted Ladd:
The obelisk occupied the center of Monument Square where Merrimack Street and Arcand Drive come together. The bodies were returned to Lowell in May of 1861. Four years later this monument was raised over their graves.
The monument is twenty-seven and a half-feet high. When it was dedicated in 1865, Harper’s Weekly covered it and offered this engraving.
Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts spoke on the day of dedication. Andrew said that the attempted interference with the 6th Massachusetts came on April 19, the anniversary of the fight at Lexington in 1775. Four of the companies of the Sixth were raised in Lowell. Gov. Andrew said that Whitney had joined the Lowell City Guard in 1860 which would become Company D of the Sixth. Whitney had later taken leave of the Guard to learn a new trade, but he had rejoined in March of 1861 as conflict became imminent. He was killed in Baltimore with a bullet through his chest on Pratt Street. Ladd enlisted in the City Guard three months before his death. When his body was recovered, he had multiple gunshot holes in his clothes, according to Andrew.
The front of the monument has the seal of Massachusetts. Lowell had very strongly Abolitionist sentiments before the war, even though a sizeable portion of its economy depended on cotton from the South.
The mills of Lowell were the largest industrial complex in the United States by the time of the Civil War. While many of the workers were, like Ladd’s sisters, young single farmgirls, there were men like Whitney and Ladd and large numbers of immigrants since 1848. At the time of the Civil War, Lowell had a population of 37,000, roughly the size of Richmond, Va.
Benjamin Franklin Butler, a local politician and Adjutant of the Massachusetts militia was also sent to Maryland. His actions helped keep the state from leaving the Union.
Below is the marker identifying Charles Taylor, another Lowell resident, who was killed by the mobs in Baltimore.
Lowell’s shield is opposite that of Massachusetts.
The modern symbols identify Lowell with the future. Railroads, factories, and a modern (for 1865) bridge shows this is not an ancient New England town.
The Whitney side of the monument.
In front of the monument of mourning, is a Winged Victory with a laurel wreath in her hands.
The engraving shows that this was put up just two years after the monument in 1867.
Victory and the monument are backed by the City Hall.
While the Civil War city hall still stands, the large building behind the monument is from 1893. It is in the Romanesque style.
Just a block away from the monument is a sprawling Lowell National Historical Park devoted to the city’s industrial history, its canals, its streetcars, and railroads, many of which were in use during the Civil War and Reconstruction. If you visit the monument, try to allow yourself several hours to visit the National Park.
The entrance is near the 1848 Building next to the Pawtucket Canal.
All color photos were taken by Pat Young unless otherwise noted. To see more sites Pat visited CLICK HERE for Google Earth view.
Source of Feature Illustration: Massachusetts Militia Passing Through Baltimore (Baltimore Riot of 1861) engraving of F.F. Walker (1861).
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In my forthcoming biography, I describe George Boutwell walking past this monument on April 19, 1865 on his way to deliver a eulogy to Abraham Lincoln, four days after the President’s death. How ironic that Boutwell was in Lowell that day (near his hometown of Groton, Mass.), four years after Ladd, Whitney, and two other soldiers of the 6th Mass. Regiment died in the Baltimore riots as the 6th Mass. Regiment was on its way to Washington, the first fully equipped military force to respond to Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops. And, of course, the further irony that Lowell and the surrounding Middlesex County supplied the Minutemen who fought at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Redeeming America’s Promise: George S. Boutwell and the Politics of Race, Money, and Power (W.W. Norton, January 2025)
Very interesting.
Thanks for posting this. I need to get down to Lowell to see it. I lived in the city for 8 years, but spent little time in the center of town.
Hi Patrick.
An excellent recap. An added detail for a detail man.
The fifth KIA that day named Sumner Needham.
Co. I , 6th MVM. He is buried in Lawrence Mass.
The city of Lawrence commemorated him by significant monument. Died at age 33 leaving widow and child. Have photos.
Thanks. Will check it out.
George Boutwell walked among the men of the Mass. 6th Militia in a Boston produce warehouse on the night before they left by train for Baltimore and DC, with one of the young soldiers telling him, “many of us will never see Massachusetts again.” A few days later, Boutwell himself traveled to Washington as Gov. Andrew’s military representative, having to bypass secesh Baltimore by sailing down the Chesapeake to Annapolis, then meeting in DC with Gen. Winfield Scott and President Lincoln, who had thanked the men of the Mass. 6th in the US Capitol where they were billeted, telling them “you are the only Northern realities,” referring to the President’s recent call for 75,000 troops.