But the controlling force of the colony was the spirit of Baltimore, who in his instructions to his governors insisted that there should be no broils about religion or politics. Every man should be secured in the right to his opinion. Free thought was guaranteed to every Marylander, and free speech as well, except so far as free speech infringed on the rights of his neighbors, when it was strictly suppressed. Therefore, in the very foundation of Maryland was deeply laid the idea of toleration of different opinions among neighbors, of consideration for their feelings, and, as a logical consequence, of readiness at all times to help them, to protect them, and to assist them in all the struggles of life. There never was a more homogeneous, sentimental society than that planted on the Chesapeake. ‘One for all and all for one’ was the animating spirit for generations.
While the northern settlements were torn and blood-drenched and fire-blasted by intolerance, when the flames of burning witches lighted New England, and the air echoed with the lash of whipped Baptists, no man was ever molested for his opinions in Maryland—while Marylanders controlled the palatinate. Several times during that stormy epoch, which cost a king his crown in England and the people their liberties, there had been struggles between the Cavalier and Roundhead parties in Maryland, in which the latter were successful as their friends and relatives in England had been. But in all that tension of feeling there was never but one issue of arms in which blood was spilled. Therefore Maryland grew and prospered without those bitter memories which in New England and in Virginia separated class from class and divided neighbor from neighbor. And whenever their neighbors on the south side of the Potomac were harassed by the savages on their borders, the Marylanders were prompt and generous in spending life, blood, and treasure in their defense. There never was an Indian war in Maryland. The policy of the palatine, so broad and generous and just, prevented quarrels with the natives, and they were always friendly with the Marylanders. There were bloody invasions from south of the great river, from the west and from the north, but no rising ever occurred of Maryland Indians. Generosity with justice was the fundamental rule of dealing with them, and this rule of right acts upon all who practice it, as well as upon those on whom it is practiced. Respect for the weak, regard for the truth, a willingness and a desire to help those who need help, become controlling principles of life, and selfishness is eradicated as much as it is possible for human nature to be changed.
Thus developed the Maryland character. Love of country and of friends, regard for truth and justice, toleration of differences of opinion, for five generations had been the directing influence of their lives. So when in 1774 news came that the people of Boston had been shot down in their streets by men in red coats, the people rose as one man. From Mills' Creek, whence Braddock had marched twenty years before to disaster and death, to St. Mary's, where free thought had been proclaimed first in all the world, the men of Maryland mustered in companies and battalions, and in two weeks the province was organized for defense. It raised money and provisions which it sent to Boston, and, inasmuch as the port of Boston was closed to trade, formed an association pledging the people of Maryland, men, women and children, never to use any imported goods until justice was done to Boston, just as ten years before it had refused to recognize the Stamp Act. When the farmers of New England met and drove the British regulars at Breed's Hill, the prompt response of Maryland was a battalion of riflemen which marched from Frederick to Boston, 550 miles, to reinforce their brethren. Maryland had no interest in this fight. She enjoyed a just and liberal government. Her people made their own laws, levied their own taxes and expended them for their own benefit, and there was no friction between them and the government. Their governor, Sir Robert Eden, was one of the most popular gentlemen in the province. But when the word went out that Boston needed assistance, every country committee, every court, every provincial assembly proclaimed with one voice, ‘The cause of Boston is the cause of all,’ and from that hour to the signature of the definite treaty of peace, Maryland never faltered in her support of the cause of her friends and neighbors. She lavished her last man and her last dollar to sustain that cause. No British soldier ever trod the soil of Maryland except during the short march from the head of Elk to Brandywine. She was never invaded, she was never molested; but she was true to her friends. There were no Tories in Maryland. A loyalist regiment was formed on the eastern shore, but its elements were so inefficient and incongruous that it was at once removed to Nova Scotia, where it perished from the memory of man and left hardly a trace behind.
Such were the men who molded, formed and developed the society which was to face the crisis and do the duty of the times of 1859-65. It is our duty to tell how they did it.
In all discussions Maryland was on the side of the Union. She had given Colonel Washington, of Virginia, to the continental army as its commander — in chief, by and through her deputy in Congress in 1775, Thomas Johnson. She had made the first move for the Union in 1785. She had supported Washington all through the war and in the subsequent struggles and differences about the articles of Confederation, the Constitution and the Union. When, therefore, a party arose in the North which inculcated hatred toward the South, Maryland abhorred the apostles of malice and ill — will and sympathized more closely with the minority and weaker party. ‘Fatti Maschii, Parole Foemine’ was the controlling sentiment of the men whose ancestors had stood with Stirling at Long Island until they were destroyed and the American army saved; whose charge at Eutaw had saved Greene's army; whose dash at Cowpens had driven the British line; whose bayonets at Guilford had broken the solid front of the Grenadier Guards—these men all believed in standing by their friends, reckless of risk, regardless of consequences. ‘With my friend—right or wrong—with my friend’ is the complement of the State motto, ‘Courage and Chivalry.’
So, as it became clearer in 1858-59-60 that the aggressions and attacks of the North on Southern society were not to be confined to discussion and vituperation, but were to be directed by physical force, Maryland, though utterly and entirely oppose to secession, or disunion, as a remedy or relief, still began to prepare herself for an uncertain future. Her legislature in 1860 appropriated seventy thousand dollars to arm the militia of the State and entrusted the distribution of them to Thomas Holliday Hicks, governor, and his adjutant-general.
In 1859. the Democratic party, then struggling to rescue the State from the Know Nothings, whose governor Hicks was, selected Bradley T. Johnson as chairman of the State committee and the direction of the struggle was entrusted to his hands. In 1860 he was a delegate from Maryland to the Democratic national convention at Charleston and represented Maryland in the committee on resolutions. In that committee Maryland always voted with the Southern States. When that convention held its adjourned meeting in Baltimore, the majority of the Maryland delegation, with the chairman of its State committee, withdrew with the Southern States and united in nominating Breckinridge and Lane, and Maryland voted for Breckinridge and Lane when Virginia was divided and other Southern States failed to support the movement. After November, 1860, it became clear to the younger men that war was imminent. In high excitement and peril young men see more clearly than old men. They have more energy, more clearness of vision, more promptness, more decision. They were all ardent sympathizers with the South. The old men—the ex-governors, ex-United States senators, ex-judges—all brought the weight of their characters to bear against connecting Maryland with the secession movement. And there was a profound disapprobation all through the State, with all classes, against any attempt to dismember the Union. But two per cent of her people were in favor of disunion. Some few of the young men, ardent, impetuous, devoted to ideas, believed that disunion was the only possible relief from the Constant insults and aggressions of the North, its oppression and its selfish power. They were convinced that with the political power in the hands of a section and a party, the cardinal dogma of whose faith was, ‘He shall take who hath the power, and he shall keep who can!’ all the power of government would be directed toward the aggrandizement, the pecuniary aggrandizement, of those who wielded it, and that the minority in numbers and in wealth would become the serfs of the strongest, just as had been the case in all history. They thought that wealth would flow from the many to the few; that capital would accumulate in sections and in classes, as it had done in the dead hands of religious corporations in England before Henry VIII, and then dispersed and distributed by his revolutionary measures, and just as the feudal system all over Western Europe had built up in the middle ages concentrated power of the barons, who owned all the land, reduced the people to vassalage and produced the French Revolution and its horrors of