Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[419] to bring troops by water to Annapolis, and march them from there, across Maryland, to the Capital, a distance of about forty miles. The Mayor and his friends were not satisfied. The soil of Maryland must not be polluted anywhere with the tread of Northern troops; in other words, they must be kept from the seat of government, that the traitors might more easily seize it. They urged upon the President, “in the most earnest manner, a course of policy which would give peace to the country, and especially the withdrawal of all orders contemplating the passage of troops through any part of Maryland.” ¹

When the Mayor and his friends reached the cars to return, they were met by an electrograph from Mr. Garrett, President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, informing them that a large number of troops were at Cockeysville, on their way to Baltimore. They immediately returned to the President, who summoned General Scott and some of the members of the Cabinet to a conference. The President was anxious to preserve the peace, and show that he had acted in good faith in calling the Mayor to Washington; and he expressed a strong desire that the troops at Cockeysville should be sent back to York or Harrisburg. “General Scott,” said the Mayor in his report, “adopted the President's views warmly, and an order was accordingly prepared by the Lieutenant-General to that effect, and forwarded by Major Belger of the Army,” who accompanied the Mayor to Baltimore.

Even this humiliation of the Government did not appease the conspirators and their friends, and they so far worked viciously upon the courage and firmness of Governor Hicks, that he was induced to send a message to the President on the 22d, advising him not to order any more troops to pass through Maryland, and to send elsewhere some which had already arrived at Annapolis. He urged him to offer a truce to the insurgents to prevent further bloodshedding, and said: “I respectfully suggest that Lord Lyons [the British Minister] be requested to act as mediator between the contending parties of our country.” To these degrading propositions Secretary Seward replied, in behalf of the President, in which he expressed the deepest regret because of the public disturbances, and assured the Governor that the troops sought to be brought through Maryland were “intended for nothing but the defense of the Capital.” He reminded his Excellency that the route chosen by the General-in-chief for the march of troops absolutely needed at the Capital, was farthest removed from the populous cities of the State; and then he administered the following mildly drawn but stinging rebuke to the chief magistrate of a State professing to hold allegiance to the Union, who had so far forgotten his duty and the dignity of his Commonwealth as to make such suggestions as Governor Hicks had done. “The President cannot but remember,” he said, “that there has been a time in the history of our country [1814] when a General [Winder] of the American Union, with forces designed for the defense of its Capital, was not unwelcome anywhere in the State of Maryland, and certainly not at Annapolis, then, as now, the capital of that patriotic State, and then, also, one of the capitals of the Union. If eighty years could have obliterated all the other noble sentiments of that age in Maryland, the President would be hopeful, nevertheless, that there is ”