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of an enormous and rapidly accumulating National debt.
It was believed that a vigorous invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania again would inaugurate a revolution in the Free-labor States, which would lead to a practical coalition between the Confederates and their political friends in the North, and a speedy peace on terms dictated, by the servants of Jefferson Davis, on the banks of the Susquehanna and the Ohio.
Back of all this was a powerful and perhaps a prime motive for such an invasion, in the lack of subsistence for Lee's army, then to be obtained, it was believed, most speedily and abundantly from the herds and flocks and store-houses of more fruitful Maryland and Pennsylvania.1 These considerations made the Confederate leaders audacious, and impelled them to attempt audacious achievements.
At the time we are considering, the Army of Northern Virginia was in a condition of strength and morale, General Longstreet said, “to undertake any thing.”
2
Impelled by false notions of the temper of a greater portion of the people of the Free-labor States, and the real resources and strength of the Government, the conspirators ordered Lee to invade Maryland and Pennsylvania again.
So early as the 28th of May Hooker suspected such movement, and so informed the Secretary of War.
Earlier than this a benevolent citizen,3 who had been much in the army for the purpose of comforting the sick and wounded, and had rare opportunities for obtaining information from Confederate councils, had warned the authorities at Washington, Baltimore, and Harrisburg, of the impending danger; but these were slow to believe that
1 To this necessity the Richmond journals pointed at that time, in guarded editorials, one of them closing with the remark: “We urge nothing, suggest nothing, hin nothing; only state facts.”
2 Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, note 1, page 310.
3 The informer was Clement C. Barclay, of Philadelphia, who gave the warning so early as the 20th of May, a notice of which, in a letter from Baltimore, was published in The Inquirer, of Philadelphia. “I am authorized to say,” said the writer, “that Mr. Barclay has been in close counsel with our highest authorities here, and is more than ever convinced of the imperious necessity devolving on our people throughout the whole land to awake at once to a realizing sense of preparing to counteract the contingency of an invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania by the rebel hordes. Mr. Barclay returns to Washington on important business, after which he proceeds immediately to Harrisburg, to confer with Governor Curtin upon matters of weighty moment, touching affairs in Pennsylvania. He is fully alive to the importance of his mission, and of his State losing no time in the organization of her militia, that she may be in readiness to meet any emergency. All the signs of the times, and very many indications, visible only to those who see behind the curtain in the arena of Secessionism, tend to show that the Confederates will, if they can, invade Maryland and Pennsylvania this summer.”
Mr. Barclay urged the authorities of Pennsylvania to proceed at once to the “organization of the militia, so as to be in readiness to meet the emergency.”
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