April 20, 1861. |
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| Johnson's Headquarters. |
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assured them that they should have ample assistance from his county (Frederick), when they marched off, shouting for “Jeff. Davis and a Southern Confederacy,” and saluted the Maryland flag that was waving from the Headquarters of the conspirators on Fayette Street.1 On the same evening, Marshal Kane received an offer of troops from Bradley Johnson, of Frederick, who was afterward a brigadier in the Confederate Army.
Kane telegraphed back, saying :--“Thank you for your offer.
Bring your men by the first train, and we will arrange with the railroad afterward.
Streets red with Maryland blood! Send expresses over the mountains and valleys of Maryland and Virginia for the riflemen to come without delay.
Further hordes [meaning loyal volunteers] will be down upon us to-morrow.
We will fight them and whip them, or die.”
Early the next morning Johnson posted handbills in Frederick,2 calling upon the secessionists to rally to his standard.
Many came, and with them he hastened to Baltimore,
and made his Headquarters in the house No. 34 Holliday Street, opposite Kane's office in the old City Hall.
Governor Hicks passed the night of the 19th at the house of Mayor Brown.
At eleven o'clock the Mayor, with the concurrence of the Governor, sent a committee, consisting of Lenox Bond, George W. Dobbin, and John C. Brune, to President Lincoln, with a letter, in which he assured the chief magistrate that the people of Baltimore were “exasperated to the highest degree by the passage of troops,” and that the citizens were “universally decided in the opinion that no more should be ordered to come.”
But for the exertions of the authorities, he said, a fearful slaughter would have occurred that day; and he conceived it to be his solemn duty, under the circumstances, to inform the President that it was “not possible for more soldiers to pass through Baltimore, unless they fight their way at every step.”
He concluded by requesting the President not to order or permit any more troops to pass through the city.
“If they should attempt it,” he said, “the responsibility for the bloodshed will not rest upon me.”
Having performed this duty, the Governor and the Mayor went to bed. Their slumbers were soon broken by Marshal Kane and Ex-Governor Lowe, who came at midnight for authority to commit further outrages upon the
1 Baltimore Clipper, April 20, 1861. On that day Mr. Wales, the editor of the Clipper, spoke out boldly and ably in denunciation of the disloyal movements. Under the title of The Madness of the Hour, he said:--“Secession is political madness. It is an attempt to save a house by setting it on fire, and trying to tear out what can be gathered from the devouring element. The frenzy of secessionists with us is an unanswerable evidence of it.”
2 The following is a copy of Johnson's handbill:--
Scanned printed text.
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