He briefly spoke to the soldiers who were traveling southward. When they reached Baltimore, a mob attacked them. The rookie troops panicked and opened fire on the rioters. Twelve civilians and five soldiers were killed, and more than a hundred people were wounded. It was the first civilian bloodshed of the Civil War. If Sumner had taken a later train, he may have been among them. Speaking to another traveling Massachusetts regiment upon his arrival in New York, he compared the fallen soldiers to those who had died at Lexington, the first battle of the American Revolution, where Massachusetts
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