It sits near the entrance to Elkridge on Old Washington Avenue at Route 1: a strange black shape blending into the trees behind it. Hundreds, even thousands, of commuters pass it daily, though it's likely few have figured out what it is. Maybe it's an antique tractor, or something that was used to build the Thomas Viaduct. Surely, they may think, it has something to do with the shipping or agricultural history of Elkridge Landing. 

They would all be wrong.

The strange and dark contraption is actually a 50-year-old replica of a 150-year-old weapon designed for mass destruction: the Winans Steam Gun.

BLOODSHED IN BALTIMORE

In April of 1861 the nation was hurtling toward civil war over the issues of slavery, state's rights and economics. Baltimore was a town of deeply divided loyalties. Many of Baltimore's citizens had Southern roots and Southern relatives, and of course, Southern sympathies. And since the election of the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, seven Southern states had actually seceded from the union. Rumors of anti-government conspiracies ran rampant. On his way to Washington for his inauguration, the newly elected president stealthily came through Baltimore hours before he was scheduled to arrive in order to thwart assassins.  

Then, on April 12, 1861, the Civil War many U.S. citizens feared became reality with the attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor by the Confederate state of South Carolina. President Lincoln realized at once that the capital might be in danger. Virginia, directly across the Potomac, was about to secede. In Maryland, secessionists burned bridges and destroyed telegraph lines. On April 15, the president issued a call for the Northern states to provide 75,000 volunteers to come to the aid of the capital. Massachusetts, having prepared for war for months, already had troops on the way.

In order to reach Washington from the north, travelers of the day would take a southbound train that stopped at the President Street station in Baltimore. They then transferred to a horse-drawn car that carried them ten blocks west across Pratt Street to Camden Station, where they boarded the B&O railroad and continued on to Washington.

When part of the Sixth Massachusetts regiment attempted to do exactly that on April 19, they found Pratt Street blocked by debris. Abandoning the cars, they hefted their rifles, formed up, and began to march to Camden Station. Along the way they were met by a mob of secessionists, angry that Lincoln's troops were coming through the city on their way to "invade the South." First curses, then rocks and bricks were thrown. Pistols went off. Panicked, the soldiers began to run, firing their rifles at the crowd around them. 

Four soldiers and eleven civilians were killed, and many others wounded.  And Baltimore was seething.

GOVERNMENT PREPARES TO DEFEND CITY

Prior to the Pratt Street riot, Baltimore Mayor George William Brown, along with Maryland Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks, had put together a half-million-dollar fund to purchase weapons "for the defense of Baltimore."

Sixty-five-year-old Ross Winans, a pioneering locomotive and steamship designer, was a multi-millionaire whose Baltimore machine shops were the largest in the country. He was a vehement states rights advocate, and something of a Southern sympathizer. Winans' shops were busily producing 3,500 pikes, wooden poles with an iron spear point on one end, along with munitions to be sold to the city's Board of Police to be used in the defense of the city.

At the same time, another inventor was in town looking to make a sale to the city. Charles S. Dickinson of Ohio had invented a steam-driven centrifugal force weapon said to be capable of firing three-ounce lead balls at a rate of 300 per minute, with a range of more than 100 yards. His machine had been built in Boston, and he was hoping to demonstrate it to the Baltimore City Council. He brought weapon to the city in February and put it on public display.

Weighing close to five tons, the gun was mounted on a four-wheeled platform designed to be moved into place by horses.  The front of the gun had a cone shaped nose made of iron, with a long horizontal slit to allow the gun barrel to move left and right while firing. Behind the cone, to protect it from enemy bullets, sat the boiler, a steam operated revolving drum, and the operator, who would feed the balls into a hopper, loading the drum.  Controlled by a series of steam valves, the spinning drum was designed to discharge the balls through the gun barrel.

The concept is similar to a modern washing machine on the spin cycle, forcing the water out of clothes through the holes in the drum.

After the Massachusetts troops made it to the Camden Station and on to Washington, rumors began that more were on the way. Five thousand Pennsylvania troops were said to be at Cockeysville, heading south. Every secessionist in Baltimore grabbed a weapon, and began to barricade the streets leading into the city with furniture, wagon and debris. The mayor and governor fired off telegrams warning the president that the city was a powder keg ready to explode, and pleading with him not to send any more troops through Baltimore.

The Baltimore City police began to make ready for invasion. They seized Dickinson's gun, and placed it on a main street on the north side of the city, and waited. 

CRISIS AVERTED

Meanwhile, General Benjamin Butler had figured out a way to get the troops to Washington without going through Baltimore. Lincoln approved the plan to move troops to Annapolis by boat, then to the capital by train. The crisis was averted, and after a few days the citizenry relaxed. The streets were cleared, and the weapons returned to storage. City authorities took the gun to the Winans' machine shop for inspection and repair, and to be returned to Dickinson.

Dickinson may have thought that his gun was in danger of being seized permanently by the federal government, and his investment lost. He met John Bradford of Virginia, with a plan to move the gun to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and sell it, most likely to the Confederate government. Bradford and Dickinson split the cost of hiring two teamsters and their mules. On May 10, with Dickinson following behind in a buggy, the four men slowly began to make their way down the Frederick turnpike. 

One report say they used the pretense that they were going out to do some long range tests, while another says the gun was covered by a large box, but not everyone bought the ruse.  Federal troops under the command of General Butler, including those of the Sixth Massachusetts, had occupied the Relay House near Elkridge Landing since early May. Union loyalists had been visiting the camps at Relay non-stop, providing the general's staff with information. A colonel got a report of the suspicious travelers.

At 11 a.m. that day, during a heavy rainstorm, the train to Ellicott's Mills was stopped at Relay, and a company of the Eighth New York infantry along with an artillery company and two cannons was ordered aboard. On the way to Ellicott's Mills they were told of the killing machine they were being sent to capture. 

The train arrived at the station almost simultaneously as the gun. Seeing the several hundred well-armed troops, the four men wisely surrendered. The troops disembarked, and with their prize being hauled by the same mules, marched back to Relay.

When the gun reached Relay, after a period of curious inspection, it was put it to use. The gun was placed overlooking the Thomas Viaduct to protect the rail line from attack, along with artillery and rifle pits.

Whether the gun ever functioned as designed is unknown. The Union troops tried to figure it out, but supposedly Dickinson had taken some integral parts and hidden them before capture. The gun went was moved in July from Relay down to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, and from there back to be displayed in Massachusetts as a war prize. It finally ended up being presented to the Middlesex Mechanics' Association, and may have been scrapped in the years after. 

Once Dickinson was released from custody he went to Richmond, where the Confederate Congress appropriated $50,000 to build his gun. No record exists of any being made.

Winans was mistakenly associated with the gun in all the newspaper reports. He really had little to do with it, other than having repaired it in his shop and being an active supporter of states rights. However, he was arrested at Relay a few days after the gun was captured for "active sympathy with the rebels." Wealthy, and politically connected to friends of Lincoln, he was released after taking an oath not to engage in the rebellion.

The Elkridge replica of the steam gun was built in 1961 by Mark Handwerk, Joseph H. Clark and Joseph Zoller III for the Centennial of the Civil War, and is in need of some restoration.  And, as we approach the 150^th anniversary of the steam gun's capture in May, 2011, now might be the perfect time to reacquaint people with this unique footnote to our area's history.

 In addition to writing for Patch and others, Mike Radinsky is a dad, history lover, and living historian. On weekends, he is usually found at a battlefield or museum (try the Ellicott City B&O Railroad Station Museum), wearing blue or gray wool, carrying a musket and talking to kids about history. Mike searches for unique, little known stories about the history of the area. Much of the information contained in this piece about the Winans Steam Gun is from period newspaper accounts, as well as sources by Maryland Civil War historians, such as "Baltimore During the Civil War" by Daniel Carroll Toomey, and "Maryland Voices of the Civil War" by Charles W. Mitchell.