Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/34

24 George's were on the march. Three batteries of light artillery were out on the streets, and the city was braced up in tense excitement.

Just after the people had gone to church on that day, about half-past ten, two men rode down Charles Street, in a sweeping gallop, from beyond the boundary to Lexington and down Lexington to the city hall. They shouted as they flashed by, "The Yankees are coming, the Yankees are coming!" Twenty-four hundred of Pennsylvania troops, only half of them armed, had got as far as Cockeysville, twenty miles from Baltimore, where they had been stopped by the burnt bridges, and had gone into camp. These couriers of disaster brought the news of this fresh invasion and it flashed through the city like an electric shock. The churches dismissed their congregations, their bells rang, and in the twinkling of an eye the streets were packed with people— men and women in the hysterics of excitement pressing guns, pistols, fowling pieces, swords, daggers, bowie knives, every variety of weapon, upon the men and beseeching them to drive back the hated invader. In an hour Monument Square was packed, crammed with such a mass of quivering humanity as has rarely been seen in human history.

Early that morning the mayor had gone to Washington on a special train to see the President and General Scott at the invitation of the former to the governor and mayor to visit him for conference as to the best way to preserve the peace. They arrived at an understanding that no more troops were to be marched through Baltimore. They were to be brought from Harrisburg down to the Relay House on the Northern Central railroad, seven miles north-west of the city, and thence by rail to Washington. General Scott proposed this plan to the President, if the people of Maryland would permit it and would not molest the troops. But if they were attacked, the general of the army said, he would bring troops from Perryville by