Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/91

Rh The ribaldry, blasphemy, obscenity of these poor half-drunken. creatures was horrible. But not only so; there were among the prisoners one or two stout, stalwart Baltimore roughs, Irishmen, whose sympathies were with the South, and who, true to the open-hearted instincts of their mother-land, were outspoken in their sentiments, and not at all averse to a submission of them to the arbitrament of battle. And so every now and then some drunken Federal soldier would cry out amidst the darkness, "I can whip any man who is for Jeff. Davis." And from across the room would come, like an ominous echo out of the darkness, "Hurrah for Jeff. Davis." Then there would be a collision about the centre of the room, partaking at first of the character of a fisticuff between two, and then of a general melee with the idea of "wherever you see a head hit it," and a very painful foreboding that your own head might be the next one to attract the attention of some accommodating belligerent.

It is hardly necessary to say that there was no sleep that night, or that, squeezing as closely as possible into an angle of the room, and protected fortunately by a kind of breastwork made of the bodies of those who were too much overcome with liquor and sleep to take part in the engagement, I maintained a strict neutrality, keeping ingloriously silent even when some besotted blue-coat would move up menacingly towards me and dare me to "chirp for Jeff. Davis." Nor need I say how rejoiced I was when the morning came, and being abandoned now by all hope of return to the South, I was ordered to Fort McHenry, and the life enacted of which some account will be given in the following pages.

On an arm of the Patapsco river, some two miles below the city of Baltimore, and guarding the entrance to its harbor, stands this old fortress, in existence as early certainly as 1794, bearing, in honor of one of the heroes of the first revolution, the name of.

Its chief claim to historic interest lies in the conspicuous part which it bore in the defence of Baltimore during its memorable siege by the British in the autumn of the year 1814. Ross, the British General, having completed his work of vandalism at Washington, had taken fleet with his army and entered the Patapsco, with the design of seizing the city of Baltimore and wintering there. The whole issue of the campaign, and with it, apparently, the fate of the war, depended on the capture of the city. To effect this, a passage must be forced under the guns of Fort McHenry, held at