directed by the same principles, without conscience, without sense of right or justice, would evolve the same conditions with the same consequences, and that the only salvation for Southern society was absolute and entire separation under a different government; that slavery furnished the only solution of self-government based on universal suffrage, and the only organization of labor and capital which had survived, or could survive the change of social conditions in ages of development and progress. They were disunionists per se; but they were few and scattered and exerted no influence on the public opinion. Their enthusiasm, their earnest conviction, did impress themselves on the mass, and when the time came the fire of their ardor kindled the State from mountain to ocean.
So the time went on. State after State of the South seceded from the Union. State after State of the North organized, armed and drilled her militia. In February, 1861, the Southern party of Maryland, led by the young men, called a conference convention to meet in Baltimore to confer together and decide what the honor and the interests of Maryland required her to do in the crisis. Honor first—interest last! That conference met and was such a demonstration of physical strength, of resolute purpose and of intelligent design, that it alarmed the conservative sentiment. But in February no action could be taken. Virginia had not moved, and it was uncertain how or when she would move, for the South or against it.
The governor of Maryland, Thomas Holliday Hicks, professed to be an ardent Southern man. The young men did not believe him, put no confidence in him. The old men, Union to the core, old Whigs, conservative by education and by nature, did trust him and insisted that Maryland should do nothing without the action of her constituted authorities, her governor and her legislature. The party of action urged a call of the general assembly. The governor protested that he was then in correspondence with the governors of the border States and that they would devise and execute means to save the Union and to preserve the peace. The conference adjourned until the middle of March, by which time Lincoln would be inaugurated and the Federal government pass from the hands of the State rights Democracy to the successors of the Federal party that Jefferson and the Democracy had expelled in John Adams' time.
In Lincoln's inaugural he avowed the determination of the party in power ‘to retake, reoccupy and repossess the forts, arsenals, dock-yards and other property of the United States which had been seized in the Southern States by State authority.’ This meant war! But still the conservatives of Maryland could not understand it. They clung to their idea that talk, palaver, negotiation would weather the storm, and that the tornado could be stilled by resolving and asserting that the wind was not blowing. As soon as the conference convention reassembled on the 12th of March in Baltimore, the party of action asserted itself. Judge Chambers, ex-United States senator and ex-judge of the court of appeals, was made president, and a committee on resolutions appointed. The majority of the committee reported a set of resolutions of generalities—devotion to the Union, and opposition to disorder and disturbance of the public peace. The minority, through the chairman of the State committee, who was a member of the conference and of the committee, reported that any ‘attempt by the Federal government to retake, reoccupy or repossess the forts, arsenals and dock-yards now controlled by the Southern States, would be an act of war by the Federal government on the States, would operate ipso facto as a dissolution of the Union, and would remit to each State its original sovereign right to provide for its own safety and welfare, in any manner it decided to pursue.’ These resolutions would have been passed, but they met such violent opposition from the old men ( Judge Chambers declared he would leave the chair and the convention if they were passed) that their author left the conference in disgust and returned home, where he promptly organized a military company for home defense and to resist invasion by foreign troops moving from the North to attack the South. The conference sent commissioners to Richmond to learn from the convention there in session what was the prospect of Virginia's taking position. They could learn nothing, for Virginia herself did not know.
Chapter 2: Maryland's First patriotic movement in 1861.
On April 12, 186, South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter, and on April 15th President Lincoln issued his proclamation, calling on the States for 75,000 militia ‘to maintain the Union and to redress wrongs already too long endured.’ He did not specify the wrongs nor the period of endurance. With the proclamation went out from the secretary of war a requisition on the governors of each of the States for the State's quota of the 75,000 troops. Virginia promptly responded by passing her ordinance of secession on the 7th, not, however, to take effect until it had been ratified by a vote of the people, to be cast on the 24th of May; and the governor of Virginia, John Letcher, moved Virginia troops to Harper's Ferry and ‘retook, reoccupied and repossessed’ that property of Virginia which she had ceded to the Union for the common welfare and mutual benefit of all the States, East and West, North and South. Now that it was being diverted to the injury of part and the exclusive use of one section, Virginia resumed the control of her ancient territory. Had she had the power, she would have had the right ‘to resume possession, control and sovereignty’ of all the six States she had ceded to the Union, northwest of the Ohio river. But, alas, her own children, born of her blood and bred of her loins, were foremost in striking at the heart and life of their mother. The Northwest was the most ardent in ‘suppressing the rebellion,’ the forerunner of which had been independence from the British nation and the right of self-government for the English in America, and had breathed into their nostrils the breath of Statehood.
With the defiance of old Virginia, went that of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, who spurned the demand of the government back of it for men and arms to make war on brethren, kinsmen and fellow citizens. Kentucky tried the impracticable role of neutrality, but she was soon overrun by Federal troops. Governor Hicks assured the people that no troops should be sent from Maryland, unless it was to defend the national capital. The mayor of Baltimore, George William Brown, also issued his proclamation, expressing his satisfaction that no troops would be sent from Maryland to the soil of any other State. ‘If the counsels of the governor,’ he said, ‘shall be heeded, we may rest secure in the confidence that the storm of civil war which now threatens the country will at least pass over our beloved State and leave it unharmed, but if they shall be disregarded a fearful and fratricidal strife may at once burst out in our midst.’ So the governor and the mayor. The first knew well that in the strife of the elements, which was about to burst, in which the foundations of the mountains would be broken up and the winds of the tempest would sweep the land, the cry of ‘Peace! Peace!’ was but the whining of babes—for Governor Hicks was no fool. He was a shrewd, sharp, positive man. He knew what he wanted and he took efficient means to procure it. He wanted to save Maryland to the Northern States. He believed the Union was gone. In the Southern Confederacy, Maryland must, in his opinion, play a subordinate part and he, himself, fall back into the political obscurity from which he had been recently raised. With the North, Maryland in possession of the national capital, protected by the Northern navy through her bay and great rivers, would be a conspicuous power, and he, as her governor, would fill a distinguished role. He knew that Maryland was as ardently Southern as Virginia. The Marylanders are the more excitable race. They are ardent, sympathetic and enthusiastic. And they were afire at the threat of invasion of Virginia. Had the governor hinted at his ulterior hopes and designs—at his purpose to keep Maryland quiet until she could be occupied by Northern troops and delivered, tied and manacled, to the Union authorities—had he given open ground for suspicion of treachery, the State would have risen, he would have been expelled, his government eradicated, and a revolutionary government of action instituted.
Mayor Brown was a high-minded, just and honorable gentleman. But he was a lawyer and an old man. He was devoted to his State and to his city, and no purer patriot ever lived than George William Brown. But he believed in law; he could conceive of nothing higher than law. Force to him meant riot, and in a great city riot always means arson, robbery, murder and license. The mayor believed that with the police and the fire departments he could control revolution and subdue the fires of insurrection. He faithfully did his duty as he saw it. He and his police commissioners tried to keep the peace, and in three months all were landed in Federal prisons, where they were incarcerated for fourteen months, beyond the reach of habeas corpus, without charge or indictment. Maryland thus suffered ‘the crucifixion of the soul,’ for her