A single concession to the
arbitrary tendencies of Lincoln's Cabinet, so as to allow interference
with the free expression of Maryland's will when the crisis shall
arrive, would not only, I believe, crush the hopes of the vast majority
of this State's inhabitants, but also betray the vital interest of the
Southern Confederacy in days to come.
If further proof were needed of the Southern sympathy prevalent in
Baltimore, such would be found in the measures of coercion and
prevention employed by General Schenck, when Lee's army was thought
dangerously near. A private letter dispatched to me in the height of the
panic, more than confirmed the accounts in public prints of the
stringency of the martial law. The Federal officers were, perhaps, not
sorry to have such a chance of repaying, with aggravated oppression, the
tacit contumely which must have galled them for a year and more. The
Maryland Club, whose members are Southerners to a man (for the Unionist
element was eliminated long ago), is now the headquarters of a New
England regiment, and even Colonel Fish may now wander at will through
the cool, pleasant chambers that, before comparative liberty was
stifled, he would have found not more accessible than the lost paradise
of Sultan Zim. I greatly fear that some of those daring dames and
damsels, so careless in dissembling their antipathies, may, ere this,
have been made to pay a heavy price for the indulgence of past disdain.
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