[
409]
Chapter 17: events in and near the National Capital.
- The conspirators alarmed by the loyalty of the people, 409.
-- attack on Massachusetts troops in Baltimore, 411-413.
-- Pennsylvania troops attacked, 414.
-- the mob triumphant, 415.
-- attitude of the public authorities, 416.
-- destruction of Railway bridges authorized and executed, 417.
-- connection with the Capital cut off
-- the first Mail through Baltimore, 418.
-- degrading proposition to the Government rebuked, 419.
-- the President and Baltimore Emibassies
-- defection of Army officers, 420.
-- resignation of Colonel Lee 421.
-- his inducements to be loyal, 422.
-- Arlington House and its Surroundings
-- designs against Washington City, 423.
-- preparations to defend the Capital--“Cassius M. Clay Guard,” 424.
-- the massacre in Baltimore
-- the martyrs on that occasion honored, 426.
-- their funeral and Monument, 427.
-- the honor of Maryland vindicated
-- New York aroused, 428.
-- the Union defense Committee and its work, 429.
-- active and patriotic labors of General Wool, 430.
-- the Government and General Wool
-- his services applauded, 431.
Baltimore became the theater of a sad tragedy on the day after the loyal
Pennsylvanians passed through it to the
Capital.
The conspirators and secessionists there, who were in complicity with those of
Virginia, had been compelled, for some time, to be very circumspect, on account of the loyalty of the great body of the people.
Public displays of sympathy with the revolutionists were quickly resented.
When, in the exuberance of their joy on the “secession of
Virginia,” these sympathizers ventured to take a cannon to
Federal Hill, raise a secession flag, and fire a salute,
the workmen in the iron foundries near there turned out, captured the great gun and cast it into the waters of the
Patapsco, tore the banner into shreds, and made the disunionists fly in consternation.
At about the same time, a man seen in the streets with a secession cockade on his hat was pursued by the populace, and compelled to seek the protection of the police.
These and similar events were such significant admonitions for the conspirators that they prudently worked in secret.
They had met every night in their private room in the
Taylor Building, on Fayette Street;
1 and there they formed their plans for resistance to the passage of Northern troops through
Baltimore.
On the day when the Pennsylvanians passed through,
some leading
Virginians came down to
Baltimore from
Charlestown and
Winchester as representatives of many others of their class, and demanded of the managers of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway not only pledges, but guaranties, that no National troops, nor any munitions of war from the
Armory and Arsenal at
Harper's Ferry, should be permitted to pass over their road.
They accompanied their demand with a threat that, if it should be refused, the great railway bridge over the
Potomac at
Harper's Ferry should be destroyed.
They had heard of the uprising of the loyal people of the great Northwest, and the movement of troops toward the
National Capital from that teeming hive, and they came to effect the closing of the most direct railway communication for them.
They had heard how
Governor Dennison, with a trumpet-toned proclamation, had summoned the people of
Ohio, on the very day when the
President's call appeared,
to “rise above all party names and party bias, resolute to maintain the freedom so dearly bought by our fathers, and to transmit it unimpaired ”
