Though, in common with many others, I
may have regretted the disappointment of our anticipations with regard
to a general rising, in co-operation with the Southern invaders; I think
it is easy to show that there were reasons sufficient to account for, if
not excuse, this second apparent supineness.
"I believe that at home people have a very faint--perhaps a very
false--idea of how men think, and act, and suffer, in this same Border
State. Your impression may be that a lethargy prevails, where, in
reality, dangerous fever is the disease--a fever that must one day break
out violently, in spite of the quack medicines administered by an
incapable Government--in spite of the restrictions unsparingly employed,
by that grim sick-nurse, martial law.
"I fancy the world is hardly aware of the hearty sympathy with the
South--the intense antipathy to the North--which animates at this moment
the vast majority of Marylanders. I have heard more than one assert that
of the two alternatives, he would infinitely prefer becoming again a
colonial subject of England to remaining a member of the Federal Union.
This sounds like an exaggeration; I believe it to have been simply the
truth, strongly stated. I believe that the partisan spirit is as rife
and as bitter in many parts of this State, as it can be in South
Carolina or Georgia.
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