Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/36

26 State looking toward taking part in the revolution, which it was clear, was upon the whole country.

Captain Johnson had brought back his company from Baltimore, armed with Hall's carbines, an antiquated and rejected breechloader, and had got his men into some sort of shape. He remained in Frederick at the request of the State rights members of the legislature to guard and protect them from the Unionists of the town, who were loquacious and loud in their threats against "the Secesh." And the legislature was prompt to range itself on the side of peace and Union. It met on the 26th of April. On the 27th it issued an address disclaiming all idea, intention or authority to pass any ordinance of secession. It appointed Otho Scott, Robert M. McLane and William J. Ross commissioners to confer with the President of the United States and see what arrangements could be made to preserve the peace of the State. On May 6th these commissioners reported that they had had an interview with the President, and that he had assured them that the State of Maryland, so long as she did not array herself against the Federal government, would not be molested or interfered with, except so far as it was necessary for the preservation of the Union. But neither governor, general assembly nor commissioners to the President had the faintest conception of the real state of things in Maryland. She was devoted to the Union. She was hostile to secession. She abhorred the men who precipitated the Gulf States into revolution. She had no sympathy with slavery, for she had emancipated more than half her slaves and had established a negro State of Maryland in Africa, where she was training her emancipated servants to take control of their own destiny as free men, and this colony she supported by annual appropriations out of her public taxes. There was no involuntary servitude in Maryland, for as soon as a servant became discontented he or she just walked over the line into Pennsylvania, where they were safely harbored and concealed.