But on the very next day the horrors of civil war began in Baltimore. By this time President Lincoln was collecting troops at Washington for the protection of the capital; and that army of the Potomac, which has ever since occupied the Virginian side of the river, was in course of construction. To join this, certain troops from Massachusetts were sent down by the usual route, via New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; but on their reaching Baltimore by railway, the mob of that town refused to allow them to pass through,--and a fight began. Nine citizens were killed and two soldiers, and as many more were wounded. This, I think, was the first blood spilt in the civil war; and the attack was first made by the mob of the first slave city reached by the Northern soldiers. This goes far to show, not that the border States desired secession, but that, when compelled to choose between secession and Union, when not allowed by circumstances to remain neutral, their sympathies were with their sister slave States rather than with the North.
Then there was a great running about of official men between Baltimore and Washington, and the President was besieged with entreaties that no troops should be sent through Baltimore. Now this was hard enough upon President Lincoln, seeing that he was bound to defend his capital, that he could get no troops from the South, and that Baltimore is on the high-road from Washington both to the West and to the North; but, nevertheless, he gave way. Had he not done so, all Baltimore would have been in a blaze of rebellion, and the scene of the coming contest must have been removed from Virginia to Maryland, and Congress and the government must have traveled from Washington north to Philadelphia. "They shall not come through Baltimore," said Mr. Lincoln. "But they shall come through the State of Maryland. They shall be passed over Chesapeake Bay by water to Annapolis, and shall come up by rail from thence." This arrangement was as distasteful to the State of Maryland as the other; but Annapolis is a small town without a mob, and the Marylanders had no means of preventing the passage of the troops. Attempts were made to refuse the use of the Annapolis branch railway, but General Butler had the arranging of that. General Butler was a lawyer from Boston, and by no means inclined to indulge the scruples of the Marylanders who had so roughly treated his fellow-citizens from Massachusetts. The troops did therefore pass by Annapolis, much to the disgust of the State.
On the 27th of April, Governor Hicks, having now had a sufficiency of individual responsibility, summoned the legislature of which he had expressed so bad an opinion; but on this occasion he omitted to repeat that opinion, and submitted his views in very proper terms to the wisdom of the senators and representatives. He entertains, as he says, an honest conviction that the safety of Maryland lies in preserving a neutral position between the North and the South.
Certainly, Governor Hicks, if it were only possible! The legislature again went to work to prevent, if it might be prevented, the passage of troops through their State; but luckily for them, they failed. The President was bound to defend Washington, and the Marylanders were denied their wish of having their own fields made the fighting ground of the civil war.
That which appears to me to be the most remarkable feature in all this is the antagonism between United States law and individual State feeling. Through the whole proceeding the Governor and the State of Maryland seemed to have considered it quite reasonable to oppose the constitutional power of the President and his government. It is argued in all the speeches and written documents that were produced in Maryland at the time, that Maryland was true to the Union; and yet she put herself in opposition to the constitutional military power of the President. Certain Commissioners went from the State legislature to Washington in May, and from their report it appears that the President had expressed himself of opinion that Maryland might do this or that "as long as she had not taken and was not about to take a hostile attitude to the Federal government!" From which we are to gather that a denial of that military power given to the President by the Constitution was not considered as an attitude hostile to the Federal government. At any rate, it was direct disobedience to Federal law. I cannot but revert from this to the condition of the Fugitive Slave Law. Federal law, and indeed the original constitution, plainly declare that fugitive slaves shall be given up by the free-soil States. Massachusetts proclaims herself to be specially a Federal law-loving State. But every man in Massachusetts knows that no judge, no sheriff, no magistrate, no policeman in that State would at this time, or then, when that civil war was beginning, have lent a hand in any way to the rendition of a fugitive slave. The Federal law requires the State to give up the fugitive, but the State law does not require judge, sheriff, magistrate, or policeman to engage in such work, and no judge, sheriff or magistrate will do so; consequently that Federal law is dead in Massachusetts, as it is also in every free-soil State,--dead, except in as much as there was life in it to create ill blood as long as the North and South remained together, and would be life in it for the same effect if they should again be brought under the same flag.