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

“ [447] State, if requested thereto by the civil authorities, as of the United States laws, which are being violated within its limits by some malignant and traitorous men; and in order to testify the acceptance by the Federal Government of the fact, that the city and all the well-intentioned portion of its inhabitants are loyal to the Union and the Constitution, and are to be so regarded and treated by all.”

How came Butler and his men on Federal Hill? was a question upon thousands of lips on that eventful morning. They had moved stealthily from the station in the gloom, at half-past 7 in the evening, piloted by Colonel Robert Hare, of Ellicott's Mills, and Captain McConnell, through Lee, Hanover,, Montgomery, and Light Streets, to the foot of Federal Hill. The night was intensely dark, made so by the impending storm. The flashes of lightning and peals of thunder were terrific, but the rain was withheld until they had nearly reached their destination. Then it came like a flood, just as they commenced the ascent of the declivity. “The spectacle was grand,” said the General to the writer, while on the Ben Deford, lying off Fort Fisher one pleasant evening in December, 1864. “I was the first to reach the summit. The rain was falling in immense volumes, and the lightning flashes followed each other in rapid succession making the point of every bayonet in that slow-moving

Butler's Headquarters on Federal Hill.

column appear like a tongue of flame, and the burnished brass cannon like sheets of fire.”

Officers and men were tho roughly drenched, and on the summit of the, hill they found very little shelter. A house of refreshment, with a long upper and lower piazza, kept by a German, was taken possession of and made the General's Headquarters; and there, dripping with the rain, he sat down and wrote his proclamation, which appeared in the morning. His men had procured wood when the storm ceased, lighted fires, and were making themselves comfortable. At eight o'clock, long after his proclamation had been scattered over the town, he received the Mayor's message of the previous evening. Important events had transpired since it was written, twelve hours before. The Massachusetts Sixth had again marched through Baltimore, not, as before, the objects of assault by a brutal mob, but as a potential force, to hold that mob and also clothers in subserviency to law and order, and welcomed as deliverers by thousands of loyal citizens.

So confident was General Butler in the moral and physical strength of his position, and of the salutary influence of his proclamation, in which he promised security to the peaceful and true, punishment to the turbulent and false, and justice to all, that he rode through the city with his staff on the day after his arrival, dined leisurely at the Gillmore House, and had conferences with friends. In that proclamation he forbade transportation of sup plies to the insurgents; asked for commissary stores, at fair prices, to the amount of forty thousand rations, and also clothing; forbade all assemblages of irregular military organizations; directed State military officers to report