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

[551] was, as we have already observed, continually thrust upon the notice of that people through the most respectable as well as the most disreputable of their public speakers and journals. The Richmond papers, published under the inspiration of Davis and his fellow-conspirators, were especially offensive. Sufficient has been cited from these journals, and others in the Slave-labor States, to show how horribly the minds of the people were abused; and yet what we have given is mild in sentiment and decent in expression compared with much that filled the newspapers of the Confederacy and was heard from the lips of leaders.

The speech of Davis and the proclamation of Beauregard were applauded by the secession leaders in Washington City and in Baltimore, as exhibiting the ring of true metal, and gave a new impulse to their desires for linking the fortunes of Maryland with the Confederacy, and renewed their hopes of a speedy consummation of their wishes. The temporary panic that seized them when Butler so suddenly took military possession of Baltimore had quickly subsided after he was called away; and under the mild administration of martial law by General Cadwalader, his successor, they became daily more bold and defiant, and gave much uneasiness to the Government. It was known that the majority of the members of the Maryland Legislature were disloyal, and that secretly and openly they were doing all they could to array their State against the National Government. A committee of that body¹ had addressed a sympathizing epistle to Jefferson Davis, in which he was unwarrantably assured that the people of Maryland coincided with the conspirators in sentiment; for at the elections for members of Congress,

June 13, 1861.

to represent the State in the extraordinary session to begin on the 4th of July, so loyal was the great mass of the people of that State, that not a single sympathizer with secession was chosen.

In the city of Baltimore was the head of the secession movements in the State; and it was made apparent to the Government; early in June,

1861.

that there was a powerful combination there whose purpose was to co-operate with the armed insurgents in Virginia in attempts to seize the National Capital, by preventing soldiers from the North passing through that city, and by arming men to cross into Virginia to swell the ranks of the insurgents there. The Government took energetic steps to avert the threatened danger. N. P. Banks, Ex-Governor of Massachusetts, who had lately been appointed a Major-General of Volunteers, was assigned to the command of the Department of Annapolis, with his Headquarters at Baltimore; and on the 10th of June he succeeded Cadwalader, who joined the expedition under General Patterson.² It soon became so evident to Banks that the Board of Police, and Kane,³ the Chief of that body, were in active sympathy, if not in actual complicity, with the conspirators, that he reported to his Government his suspicions of the dangerous character of that organization, suspicions which subsequent events showed to be well founded.

After satisfying himself of the guilt of certain officials, General Banks ordered a large body of soldiers, armed and supplied with ball-cartridges, to march from Fort McHenry into the city just before daybreak on the 27th