Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/28

18 and as weak looking as a drove of cattle as the regulars escorted them through the streets. But the telegraph flamed out the news of the secession of Virginia, and at night the story of the capture of Harper's Ferry by the Virginia troops, with whom were Marylanders led by Bradley Johnson. The town was afire the night of the 18th. From all quarters came tidings of troops from the North and West, concentrating on Baltimore. The efficient militia of Massachusetts, under Maj.-Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, a man of ability, vigor and executive capacity, were on the march to protect the capital and to save the nation.

The New York Seventh, the ideal soldiers of peace parades, but in reality a gallant and game set, was filling its ranks, its cartridge boxes and its haversacks, and standing at attention, waiting word of command and tap of drum. Pennsylvania was rallying to the call of her great governor. The Democracy of the West, roused by Douglas, was rising as one man to defend the flag, and one serried, unbroken line of steel stretched from the northeast corner of Maine to the Mississippi river, ready to march forward to invade, to crush and to conquer the South. There could be no misunderstanding as to the meaning of all this. It meant war—nothing but war. War by one section on another. War urged on by hatred, by malice, by greed, by desire for conquest, to overthrow institutions existing before the republic, to destroy a social order which had given the world soldiers, statesmen and philosophers, the peers of any who had ever lived. The common people of Maryland understood it. The plain people think with their hearts, and hearts on questions of right and wrong are more unerring than heads. They were all for the South, and they were all for arming and fighting—fighting there on the spot—the first man or men who should presume to attempt to cross Maryland to get at Virginia. But the upper class is always conservative. The ex-governors, the ex-senators, the