So, of Tennessee, Missouri, or Kentucky, I will not say a word, but for
the same reasons I _may_ venture to hazard more than a guess at the
sympathies of Maryland.
Notwithstanding her superficial extent is comparatively small, there can
be no question which of the Border States enters most importantly into
the calculations of both the belligerent powers; the weight of interests
and wealth of resources that Maryland carries with her--to say nothing
of her local advantages--are such that she cannot eventually be allowed
to adhere to either side with a lukewarm or divided fidelity.
The position I am about to advance will meet with a certain amount of
dissent, if not of incredulity, and some one will probably point at
recent events as furnishing an unanswerable contradiction to much that I
affirm. I will only pray my readers to believe that I have tried hard to
cast prejudice aside in listening, in marking, and in recording; my
opportunities of forming a deliberate judgment on the sympathies of all
classes in this especial State were such as have fallen to the lot of
very few strangers; and my observations _ought_, certainly, to have been
the more accurate, from their field having been necessarily narrowed.
Perhaps I can hardly do better than reprint here the larger portion of a
letter, written in the middle of last March, to the "Morning Post;"
nothing that has occurred since induces me materially to modify any one
of the opinions expressed therein.
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