John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

[83] Navy Yard at Norfolk, and the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry. The convention made a pretence of submitting the question of secession to a popular vote, to be taken on May 23d following; and then, as if in mockery, entered at once into a secret military league with the “Confederate States” on April 24th, placing Jefferson Davis in control of all her armies and military affairs, and filling the State with “foreign” regiments from the South.

In the Border State of Maryland the situation was somewhat different. The Unionists were also in the majority, with an active and influential minority for secession. Here, as elsewhere, conspiracy had been at work for months, and gained many of the prominent leaders in politics. The Legislature was believed to be unreliable. Treason had so far taken a foothold in the populous city of Baltimore, that a secret recruiting office was sending enlisted men to Charleston. But all local demonstration was as yet baffled by the unwavering loyalty of the Governor of Maryland, Thomas Holliday Hicks. He had refused and resisted all the subtle temptations and schemes of the traitors, especially in declining to call the Legislature together to give disunion the cloak of a legal starting-point.

To understand correctly the series of sudden and startling events which now occurred in quick succession, it is necessary to bear in mind that the ten miles square of Federal territory known as the District of Columbia, in which the capital of the country, Washington, is situated, lies between Virginia and Maryland, and was formed out of the original territory of those States.

In all wars, foreign or domestic, the safety of the capital, its buildings, archives, and officers, is, of course, a constant and a paramount necessity. To guard the City of Washington against a rumored plot of seizure by the conspirators,