Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/32

22 more in front, the chief of police in rear, the baited, harried, breathless preservers of the Union reached Camden station, where they were loaded on trains and dispatched, panic-stricken, to Washington.

Outside the city limits, however, after the danger had passed, some heroic soul signalized his devotion to the flag by shooting in cold blood Robert W. Davis, a reputable and well-known citizen and merchant, whose crime was alleged to have been a cheer for Jeff Davis and the South. That evening, April 19th, Marshal Kane telegraphed to Bradley T. Johnson at Frederick: "Streets red with Maryland blood. Send expresses over the mountains of Maryland and Virginia for the riflemen to come, without delay. Fresh hordes will be down on us to-morrow. We will fight them and whip them or die."

Johnson, since the failure of the conference convention of March to act, had been engaged in organizing companies of minute men to resist invasion, by bushwhacking or any other practicable method. He had corresponded with the captains of many volunteer companies in the State, and all were moving toward concert of action. The receipt of Kane's telegram was the match to the magazine. By seven o'clock on the 20th the Frederick company was assembled, took possession of the moving train on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad to Baltimore, and by eleven o'clock marched down Baltimore street to Monument Square. Monument Square was the forum of Baltimore, where the citizens always assembled in times of peril to consult and determine that the commonweal should receive no harm. They were the first reinforcements to Baltimore. Next came two troops of cavalry from Baltimore county, and next the Patapsco Dragoons from Anne Arundel rode straight to the city hall and presented themselves to Mayor Brown to assist in the defense of the city. The afternoon papers of the 19th spread all over the State during the next day, and the State rose. Early on the morning of the 20th the city council