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[409] conclusion about the Legislature; he replied he should call it, and would prepare his proclamation immediately. The wish was then expressed that the State might as speedily as possible be filled with Federal bayonets. There were several gentlemen standing around, and the Governor, putting his hand on my shoulder, whispered: “That is exactly what I wish.” Yet, the day before, he would not grant General Butler, who was in — Annapolis harbor, permission to land his troops. He afterward protested against the seizure of the Annapolis and Elk Ridge Railroad, and fixed upon Frederick City for the meeting of the General Assembly, in order to free that body from the presence of Federal troops. He asked the President to send no more soldiers into Maryland. He proposed to the administration to submit the questions between the North and the South to Lord Lyons, the British Minister, for arbitration. He very tardily responded to the President's call for troops, and when he did so, he required an assurance from the Secretary of War that all the forces raised in Maryland should be kept within her own borders.

From things like these Mr. Greeley was led to sneer at him as the “model Union Governor,” forgetting that he, himself, had said: “Let the wayward sisters go.” There was, indeed, throughout the North a prevalent suspicion of Maryland Unionism. Even Mr. Lincoln, with all his acuteness and all his means of knowledge, and with a Maryland representative in his Cabinet, harbored doubts, though he was very cautious in expressing them. The Hon. Alexander H. Evans, before mentioned, relates a ludicrous incident, which serves to show the lurking suspicion in the President's mind. After the 19th of April riot Mr. Evans made application to the President on behalf of the Union men of Cecil county for a thousand stand of arms. “You shall have them,” said Mr. Lincoln; and then, with that well-known, but indescribable expression playing around his mouth, he added, after a pause, “but are you quite certain which way they will point them?” It must be admitted that appearances gave room for doubt; and yet I firmly believe that Winter Davis was right in claiming for a majority of the Maryland people a fealty to the Union. There were many secessionists — not a few, able, earnest, and fearless; but the real, true sentiment of the mass of the people was on the other side. Governor Hicks, too, notwithstanding some mistakes, and despite the overawing of him on the 19th of April, was a Union man to the core. I knew him well, and for more than three years had been in almost daily intercourse with him.

In dealing with the Union question he had endeavored to practice in the State the same Fabian tactics that President Lincoln so

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