Belair on the Home Front

When the Civil War began, Prince George's County was full of Southern sympathizers. To keep Maryland in the Union, President Abraham Lincoln imposed martial law, and on May 8, 1861, the Prince George's Planters' Advocate wrote that Maryland was thus subjugated without firing a gun. At Belair, owner George Cooke Ogle and his family struggled to maintain the plantation. Ogle's nephew, Richard Ogle Hodges, enlisted in the Confederate army, as did many local men. Camps Union and Casey were built at Bladensburg, and Fort Foote, Fort Washington, and Battery Jameson defended Fort Lincoln. On August 28, 1861, the Planters' Advocate wrote that travelers were stopped at each camp and examined to intercept contraband articles. When the Federals stopped steamboat travel on the Patuxent River in August 1861, the paper complained that local people could no longer get supplies from Baltimore or ship produce that had accumulated at river landings. In 1864, Confederate Gen. Bradley Tyler Johnson raided the county, destroying rail lines at Beltsville, cutting telegraph wires, and bivouacking at the Maryland Agricultural College, now the University of Maryland College Park, where he made his headquarters at the Rossborough Inn. After the war, George Ogle hoped a new railroad would bring prosperity, but Belair was heavily mortgaged, and in 1871 he sold it, ending nearly 130 years of family ownership.

Bowie, Maryland · United States