Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 29.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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[264] of the interview, which was afterward published over the Mayor's signature. ‘The protection of Washington, the President asserted with great earnestness, was the sole object of concentrating troops there, and he protested that none of the troops brought through Maryland were intended for any purposes hostile to the State or aggressive as against the Southern States. Being now unable to bring them up the Potomac in security, the President must either bring them through Maryland or abandon the capital.’ There was a full discussion of routes by which troops could be carried around Baltimore and the party left with the distinct assurance upon the part of the President that no more troops would be sent through Baltimore unless they should be obstructed in their transit around the city. In the interview with the President reference was made by Mr. Simon Cameron to the, injury to a Northern Central bridge. ‘In reply,’ Judge Brown says, ‘I addressed myself to the President and said with much earnestness that the disabling of this bridge and the other bridges had been done by authority, and that it was a measure of protection on a sudden emergency, designed to prevent bloodshed in Baltimore and not an act of hostility toward the general Government; that the people of Maryland had always been deeply attached to the Union, which had been shown on all occasions, but that they, including the citizens of Baltimore, regarded the proclamation calling for 75,000 troops as an act of war on the South and a violation of its Constitutional rights, and that it was not surprising that a high-spirited people, holding such opinions, should resent the passage of Northern troops through their city for such a purpose.’