Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[125] Baltimore brought under the law of the drum-head. The municipal police were disbanded, and a reign of terror threatened to establish itself in what was already a condition of anarchy. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended; the houses of suspected persons were searched; blank warrants were issued for domiciliary visits; and the mayor and members of the police board were arrested, and, without a trial, imprisoned in a military fortress. In other parts of the State, the inauguration of “the strong government” steadily progressed. And so thoroughly effective was it that in less than a month after the Baltimore riot, Maryland was raising her quota of troops under Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, and Governor Hicks had openly called for four regiments of volunteers to assist the Northern Government in its now fully declared policy of a war of invasion and fell destruction upon the South. But the history of such a change has to be read in the light of many circumstances. Disarmed; not even allowed to retain its militia organization; planted with troops; subjected to an infamous and degraded sway; cozened and betrayed by its Governor; divided within itself; its citizens separated by long-exasperated lines of prejudice; its press exhausting itself to envenom the differences of men; s “suspicion poisoning his brother's cup;” corruption chaffering in public market-places for the souls of men; and crime and outrage recognizable only before the tribunal of Despotism, it is not wonderful that Maryland became the easy prey of a Government that scrupled at no means of success and spared no opportunity for the perversion of the principles of men.

Whether the easy subjugation of Maryland persuaded the people of the North that the war was to be a slight task, or whether that opinion is to be ascribed to their own insolent vanity, it is very certain that they entered upon the war with a light estimation of its consequences and with an exhibition of passion, rant and bombast, such, perhaps, as the world has never seen in similar circumstances. The Government at Washington shared, or encouraged for its own purposes, the vulgar opinion that the war was soon to be despatched. It either believed, or affected to believe, that the Southern States would be reduced in a few months. But it is to be remarked that the Federal Government had a particular purpose in reducing, in popular opinion, the importance of the contest. It desired to attract volunteers by the prospects of short service and cheap glory; and it was especially anxious to guard against any probability of recognition, by England or France of the new Confederacy, and to anticipate opinion in Europe by misrepresenting the movements of the Southern States as nothing more than a local and disorganized insurrection, incidental to the history of all governments, and unworthy of any serious foreign attention. It was in this view Mr. Lincoln had framed his proclamation, calling for an army of seventy-five thousand men. He took