Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

For no better reason, so far as the public was informed, than a vote in favor of certain resolutions, General Banks sent his provost marshal to Frederick, where the legislature was in session; a cordon of pickets was placed around the town to prevent anyone from leaving it without a written permission from a member of General Banks's staff; police detectives from Baltimore then went into the town and arrested some twelve or thirteen members and several officers of the legislature, which, thereby left without a quorum, was prevented from organizing, and it performed the only act which it was competent to do, i.e., adjourned. S. Teacle Wallis, the author of the report in defense of the constitutional rights of citizens, was among those arrested. Henry May, a member of Congress, who had introduced a resolution which he hoped would be promotive of peace, was another of those arrested and thrown into prison. Senator Kennedy, of the same state, presented a report of the legislature to the United States Senate, reciting the outrage inflicted upon Maryland in the persons of her municipal officers and citizens, and, after some opposition, merely obtained an order to have it printed. Governor Hicks, whose promises had been so cheering in the beginning of the year, sent his final message to the legislature on December 3, 1861. In that, referring to the action of the Maryland legislature at its several sessions before that when the arrest of its members prevented an organization, he wrote, “This continued until the General Government had ample reason to believe it was about to go through the farce of enacting an ordinance of secession, when the treason was summarily stopped by the dispersion of the traitors. . . .” After referring to the elections of June 13th and November 6th he says the people have “declared, in the most emphatic tones, what I have never doubted, that Maryland has no sympathy with the rebellion, and desires to do her full share in the duty of suppressing it.” It would be more easy than gracious to point out the inconsistency between his first statements and this last. The conclusion is inevitable that he kept himself in equipoise, and fell at last, as men without convictions usually do, upon the stronger side.

Henceforth the story of Maryland is sad to the last degree, only relieved by the gallant men who left their homes to fight the battle of state rights when Maryland no longer furnished them a field on which they could maintain the rights their fathers left them. This was a fate doubly sad to the sons of the heroic men who, under the designation of the “Maryland line,” did so much in our Revolutionary struggle to secure the independence of the states; of the men who, at a later day, fought the battle of North Point; of the people of a land which had