HistoricSiteMarkers
Civil WarReconstruction & Gilded Age

Hugh Lennox Bond

Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland

Marker Inscription

Circuit Court Judge Hugh Lennox Bond, stalwart supporter of Lincoln and of Emancipation and later known as "the curse of the K.K.K" for his harsh sentences

Erected by Bolton Hill Historic District

The Story

Judge Hugh Lennox Bond was a Baltimore jurist who stood firmly for the Union and for emancipation during the Civil War era. Later, presiding over federal cases against the Ku Klux Klan, he handed down sentences so severe that he became known as "the curse of the K.K.K."

Why it matters

Bond embodied the fight to make emancipation real through the courts during Reconstruction, when the promise of freedom depended on judges willing to confront white terror.

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