Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 1.
Frank Moore, Ed.

We of Maryland are solicited to associate ourselves with the first of these divisions. It is said our natural relationship is with them.

We certainly have had abundant reason, in the past, to know that the governing power of Virginia does not reciprocate the favor of this relationship. Maryland has no more persistent and steady antagonism to her policy to contend against than she has ever found in the domination of this low country influence. Let those who have had the management of our public works, our railroad and canal, say what difficulties they have had to encounter in the hostility of Virginia to the grant of the smallest privilege or aid from that State; and let them describe how all solicitations have been refused until the friendly intercession of the Western counties, often baffled, has at last by peremptory demand secured us the grace of being permitted to expend millions of Maryland capital upon Virginia soil.

The true friends and allies of our policy are in the West. At this moment that region is making its protest against secession. It is a matter of the deepest moment that we should wisely appreciate this fact. It is not for us now to discuss the probable contingencies of the future, which may spring out of the state of opinion in the Western counties; but we shall not blindly adopt a policy in the present juncture, which may forever alienate them from the interest which makes them the guardians and protectors of our road and the ministers to our trade.

The singular change of opinion which has recently brought Virginia into secession is one of the inexplicable things of the day. Time may perhaps prove it to be a forced assent obtained by the arts which have, everywhere in the seceding States, more or less subdued and coerced public opinion. At present the world can only perceive that “the Mother of States,” in spite of her protestations of independence, in spite of the contumely and insult heaped upon her, has succumbed to the dictation of Carolina — has been “dragged” into revolution, and compelled to an act of submission, by which she has surrendered her lofty position as a mediator in the national quarrel, and sunk into a secondary power in the new Confederacy. She is the first of the Border States that has given way. Let Maryland be the last to follow her example.

We cannot forget that the Southern Confederacy has hitherto repudiated all connection with the Border States; that they were contemptuously repelled as unworthy of consultation. It is only now, when a severe experience has demonstrated the necessity of friends able both to pay and to fight, that these States are approached with flattering appeals to take a stand in the very front of war and bear the brunt of its worst assaults. We who never felt or professed any respect for their cause, who, indeed, accuse them of having produced all the difficulties and disgraces which have resulted from the recent Presidential Election, are now counselled to patient submission to this coercion, and even to embrace it with thankful avidity as an honorable duty. Virginia has placed herself at the head of the Submissionists, and men whom we have esteemed, here in Maryland, for their manhood, tell us we have no choice but to follow her example!

I draw this view of our condition to a close by repeating my clear conviction that the interest and safety of Maryland coincide with her loyalty to the Union, that disunion is ruin to her.

Let us not be moved by the taunt that we are aiding the Republican cause and vidicating the Administration of Mr. Lincoln. That is but the party vituperation of those who seek to frighten us by false clamor into an abandonment of our opposition to their own party schemes. We deplore the unfortunate ascendency of the Republican party; we censure the policy of the Administration. We may claim much more respect for our sincerity in this than our opponents are entitled to ask, since it is only by their machinations that the Republican party has won its ascendency, and by their desertion of their posts and their duty in Congress, that Mr. Lincoln's Administration has obtained any power to involve the country in the present commotion. In the stage at which the public embarrassments have now arrived, all the questions of the late canvass have disappeared. The country is aroused to the protection of the Union, to the defence of our system of government. The men who were most earnest in opposing the election of Mr. Lincoln, throughout the whole North and West, are united into a compact body, in a unanimous determination to vindicate the right of the people to the Union bequeathed to them by their fathers. Large numbers in the South, whose voices are suppressed by the despotism of party rule, have the same sentiment deeply impressed upon their hearts. The conservative Northern men who have come so sternly and with such alacrity to this duty of defence — a majority of the Northern people — will visit with indignant disgust the fanatical agitators of the slavery question, whose wicked pertinacity has raised this storm in the nation, and we shall hear no more of the wretched cant of the sin of slavery in the South. That abuse of the peace of the nation will be purged away by this commotion, if no other good result from it.

On one side of us is a united nation of nineteen millions of people. On the other, a divided population of nine millions. We stand between them. If we remain true to the Union, we shall have protection and peace, and hereafter an easy settlement of all our complaints. If we desert the Union, we shall be driven into a Confederacy which has but little sympathy