Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/106

 OVERNOR HICKS did not respond to the first call of the President of the United States for troops until he had delivered the State over to the Federal authorities, securely tied, handcuffed and gagged, and when habeas corpus was defied, freedom of speech made a crime, liberty of the press suppressed, trial by jury abolished, Butler holding down Baltimore under the prisons of Federal Hill and throttling the State government at Annapolis. Governor Hicks, who, at the meeting in Monument Square in the afternoon of April 10th, prayed his God to wither his right arm if ever he raised it against a sister Southern State, against Virginia and the South, had not complied with President Lincoln's first call for troops, but Butler's guns and the Federal control of the city recovered him from the panic into which he had been precipitated by the paving stones of Pratt St., and on the 14th of May, the day of Ross Winans' arrest, he issued a proclamation calling for four regiments of volunteers to serve for three months, " within the limits of Maryland, or for the defense of the capital of the United States, and not to serve beyond the limits aforesaid." In consequence of the delay, the short term of service and the ridiculous terms proposed for enlistment, the government refused to accept the home guards, guaranteed "never to leave the State except in case of invasion."

On the 2d of May President Lincoln had called for forty-two thousand and thirty-four regulars to serve for three years, and a large number of men who had volunteered under the first call enlisted under the second.