Letter from Ex-Governor Lowe, of Maryland.
The following letter from Ex-Governor Lowe, of Maryland, was laid before the Legislature of Virginia on Tuesday last: Ashland, Va, Dec., 16, 1861.
Sir:
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 14th inst., and the resolution of the House of Delegates of Virginia inviting me to occupy one of the privileged seats on the floor of the Hall.
I thank you sincerely for the kind and cordial manner in which you were pleased to inform me of the distinguished honor conferred upon me by the enlightened and patriotic body over which you preside; and I beg you to assure the House that I earnestly appreciate this delicate and generous expression of its approbation and good will.
Although the resolution conveys a high compliment personal to my self (for which I am the more grateful in as much as I feel that it exceeds my actual merits,) I am, nevertheless, perfectly sensible that the great purpose of the representatives of the people of Virginia, in adopting this resolution, was, to show to the world how deeply they sympathize with the loyal sons of Maryland in the severe tribulations which Divine Providence has sent upon them to try their faith and to chasten their affections.--Whilst bowed down to the earth in their great agony, and driven almost to despair by that ‘"hope deferred which maketh the heart sick,"’ the people of Maryland are not unmindful of another salutary purpose which the Great Disposer of events may contemplate in thus subjecting them for a time to the fiery or deal of Northern despotism and cruelty.
If Mary land had entered the Southern Confederacy eight months ago, she would have brought with her a comparatively small but exceedingly vicious class of men, whose corruption would have secretly festered in the body politic, and ultimately, perhaps, have caused its decay.
On the 19th of last April, many of these men were ready to hail the Southern banner, if convinced of its power.
The events of the past six months have unmasked those servile camp followers of the Northern despot, and placed between them and the true men of the State a gulf, which must ever remain impassible.
It is distinctly understood now that one or the other of those hostile classes must occupy and possess the State, to the exclusion of the other, whenever the final issue shall have been made by an appeal to arms.
As I cannot doubt what the result of that conflict will be, I feel no hesitation in predicting that Maryland, like Kentucky and Missouri, will come into the great conservative republic of the South, purified of the social and political contaminations which were brought upon a noble race of men by the money seeking emigrants from the land of agrarian fanaticism and sordid passion.
Maryland will become again the home of the cavaliers, as she was before the mirror of her chivalry was dimmed by the breath of the mammon-worshipers.
Even now the shores of Virginia are crowded with exiled men, who represent the ancient historical loyalty of their race; and at this hour, down by the bright waters of the Chesapeake, and along the beautiful banks of the Potomac, there are thousands of mansions, great and small, where Mary landers keep alive the high spirit and cultivate the genial domestic virtues of their renowned ancestry.
The taint of Northern pelf and the ulcers of Northern Red Republican demagogues will rapidly vanish as the old State passes through the furnace of affliction into which she has been cast by Lincoln, with a fiercer rage than that of the idolatrous Nebuchadnezzar.
Hence it is, sir, that, drawing much consolation from this faith, we strive to mitigate the rigor of our exile, and to stifle the sorrow which rises in our hearts as we listen to the wail of our suffering friends, borne to our ears upon every breeze that crosses the Potomac, and salutes the Confederate flag.--We have never permitted ourselves to doubt that flag will, at the proper time, be advanced to the rescue of our people from their cruel thraldom.
I speak what I know, when I say, that, despite the insolent mockeries of the Lincoln ballot box in Maryland, held by perjured serfs and upheld by their master's bayonets; despite the cringing falsehood of official demagogues and the purchased testimony of a recreant and suborned executive; despite the clamor of a subsidized press and the pusillanimity of the mammon-worshippers — there has always been in our noble State an over whelming majority of the people hostile to the Northern despot, and devotedly attached to the cause of Southern independence and constitutional liberty.--And now, after the bitter experiences of the last half year, it is certain, beyond all peradventure, that the actual adherents of the Northern Government do not amount to a tithe of the population.
Fraud, intimidation, violence, threats of confiscation, imprisonment, the continued pressure of arrogant military rule, petty official persecution, the temptations of patronage, and all other base means so familiar to tyrants, have been used with a zeal worthy of a less infamous cause, to extort from the people of Maryland an expression of ‘"loyalty to the Union,"’ as they still persist in characterizing the decayed remains of the old Government; and yet, their bastiles are filled to repletion with Maryland martyrs; and they dare not for one instant withdraw from her soil the armed mercenaries, who, in their imbecile terror, stand guard at the doors of rebel women and arrest rebel boys for wearing the obnoxious colors of the Southern flag, more terrible to the tyrant's minions than anything on earth except the Southern steel which glittered around that flag on an hundred fields of victory.--No!
They well understand that Maryland is at heart a ‘"rebel,"’ as she was in 76; and they remember the history of her deeds and the fate of her tories.
It would be an act of supererogation in me to undertake a detailed explanation of the causes which led to this, temporary subjugation of Maryland.
It is due to her, however, that I should briefly allude to certain prominent facts.
I am perfectly convinced that she would have left the old Union immediately, had North Carolina and Virginia gone out when the cotton States seceded.
Her Executive had not the manhood to oppose a revolution which he feared and hated, until he was surrounded by Northern bayonets.
Cowering under the storm of popular indignation, he went into Monument square on the afternoon of the memorable 19th of April last, whilst the blood of the heroic youths of Baltimore, who had scornfully driven out of their city twelve hundred armed abolitionists from Massachusetts, was still fresh upon the pavements, and there called God to witness his loyalty to the South, and prayed that his arm might rot from the socket if he ever raised it against his Southern brethren.
Such a man, as we well knew, would not have dared to lift his finger against secession in the month of February last.
It was, however, geographically and politically impossible for Maryland to join the cotton States whilst other great States, lying between her and the new Confederacy, remained even nominally in union with the North.
The delay from December to April was fatal to her; and that delay was beyond her control.
Lincoln then came into power, with his navy threatening the bay and rivers which penetrate the State at every vital point, and with his army gathering its mighty columns from the North, professedly for the protection of the Federal Capital, but in reality, as we have since witnessed, for the invasion of Virginia, Maryland had no arms, no ammunition, no military organization.
Her false-hearted Governor had purposely left her in a defenceless condition, in order that he might, with out peril to himself, deliver her up, at the suitable time, to be crucified, and receive his thirty pieces of silver as the price of his unspeakable treachery.
Then, as now, she required only arms, ammunition, and thirty days to organize her rural population.
Had she been so fortunate as to have had her lot cast south of the Potomac, she would have accomplished her redemption long ago. Being the only highway from the North to the Federal Capital, her subjugation of course became a political and military necessity with the Northern people; and as she was separated by a wide river from her Southern brethren, and was wholly without exception of early assistance from any quarter, it became evident that her effort to resist invasion, however gallant and determined, would have resulted in certain defeat, and the consequent destruction of Baltimore city, which contains two-fifths of her whole population, and nearly all of her commercial capital and enterprise.
Baltimore then had less than thirty-five hundred rifles and muskets, ten or a dozen small field pieces, and not one cannon to defend the approaches to the city.
She was surrounded by the flower of the hostile army, and cut off from all support.
After the 19th of April, Philadelphia and New York clamored for her destruction, under the mask of patriotism, though in reality instigated altogether by the intense hatred engendered by a long standing commercial rivalry.
Many loyal and gallant men refused to precipitate so unequal a contest, to be followed by such inevitable and calamitous results.
They would have been willing to carry the State out of the Union in February, or even March; but in April and May they believed it to be impracticable, unless at the sacrifice of everything which constituted the material power of the State.
They believed that time would afford an opportunity for the accomplishment of the great purpose, without demanding such a price as the destruction of their commercial emporium.
Nevertheless, these loyal and gallant men were at all times ready to bring a blackened ruin into the Southern Confederacy, rather than to purchase immunity at the cost of public virtue and private honor; rather than to wear the flower and jewels of oriental slavery.
They have always been ready to decide between these alternatives, whenever necessarily and definitely presented.
At this moment with outstretched arms, they stand upon their desecrated hearthstones, crying out to their Southern brethren to give them an opportunity to pronounce this decision on the field of battle.
They do not ask for men to fight the battle of freedom on their own soil.
They ask only for arms and ammunition, and that the tyrant's hand may be taken from their throat until they can rally their people from mountain and valley.
Then, with the courage of the old ‘"Maryland line,"’ and the benediction of a just God, they will be able to carve out and defend their liberties with their own swords.
They are willing to accept annihilation as the penalty of failure.
God knows they love the sunny South as dearly as any son of the Palmetto State.
They idolize the chivalric honor, the stern and refined idea of free government, the social dignity and conservatism which characterize the Southern mind and heart, as enthusiastically as those of their Southern brethren who were born where the snows never fall.
They offer their brave hearts and sturdy arms for all future time to be the impregnable defence of the most dangerous frontier.
They will cheerfully bear the burden of such a position of ever-beginning and never-ending harassment.
They will face the insolent rivalry of Philadelphia and New York, and Baltimore shall trample it under her foot.
They will guard the approaches to the Potomac, and seal up the gaps of the Alleghanies.
They will secure to you the full control of the glorious Chesapeake, whereupon to float the future navies of your Confederacy.
They will, hand in hand and heart to heart with Virginia, stand as a dreaded sentinel on the northernmost rampart of the young republic.
Maryland and Virginia together possess the Chesapeake and Potomac.
They jointly hold the great railroad which unites Baltimore city to Wheeling and Parkesburg.
They are the proprietors of the wealth of the Alleghanies; the boundless coal-fields; the stupendous ship timber; the inexhaustible beds of iron ore. They have the same soil and productions; the same climate, mountains and valleys; the same great water courses and water powers; the same popular manners, habits and energies, and we may say, the same people; for they are bound closely together by the ties of consanguinity and holy wedlock.
‘"Whom God hath joined together, let not man put asunder!"’
Maryland is indispensable to Virginia in many ways.
Without the Eastern Shore of Maryland, how would you hold the Eastern Shore of Virginia?
Without Baltimore city and its great railroad, how can you make it the interest of Western Virginia to shake off the foul embrace of the invader?
That public work is essential to the development of the wealth of the mountain counties, and the manufacturing industry of Wheeling is but the handmaid of the commercial enterprise of Baltimore.
To give up Maryland would in fact be to assume the herculean labor of conquering North western Virginia not by love and community of interest, but by the red vengeance of the sword.
But why should I address such arguments to the venerable State which has conducted the sons of freedom in two revolutionary struggles for independence?
I will appeal rather to her magnanimous love of all that is great and good, and to her generous sympathy for those who are ‘"persecuted for justice sake."’ I cannot doubt that Virginia will be ever true and steadfast in supporting the cause of her oppressed sister.
Maryland is also of priceless importance to the whole South.
She will bring with her a rich dowry!
Her vast mineral stores, her fertile lands, salubrious climate, noble waters, and stupendous public works are so many golden streams of wealth converging to the greatest of all the Southern cities.
She will add nearly a million to the population of the Southern Republic --a million of brave men and fair women!
Here again I cast aside every appeal to interest, and will rely altogether upon the high-hearted instincts of honor and manhood which distinguish the Southern nation.
No State of the South can steel its soul against the land of Calvert and Carroll.
Marylanders believe that such are the sentiments of the people of the South, and that they will inspire and direct the policy of the trusted leaders of this second war of independence.
With this strong faith in our hearts, we will patiently abide the decrees of Providence.
I have the honor to be your obedient servant and friend, Sir: