Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/337

Rh wagon-loads of bread and meat to them. After the alarm about the invasion had been quieted by the Mayor many citizens of Baltimore went to Cockeysville to visit the camp. * * * On May 5th General B. F. Butler occupied, with two regiments, the Relay House, and on the 13th he entered Baltimore, which was then as quiet as it is to-day. He occupied and fortified Federal Hill, and issued a proclamation treating the city as conquered territory. For this achievement, which was entirely unopposed, he was made a Major-General of Volunteers.

From this time began a series of outrages upon the citizens of Baltimore of unparalleled ferocity and injustice, which continued until the war was over. Even then political persecution did not cease until the Constitutional Convention was called by the Legislature, in January, 1867.

After the subsidence of the acute excitement of April 19th, and the following days, a reaction set in and the people divided in sentiment, some being for the Union, some for the South. As soon as the belief that the State could, or would, secede was abandoned, thousands of the best young men of the State escaped across the Potomac and joined the Confederate army. The number of them has been estimated as high as 20,000, and a great many joined the Northern army.

It was not merely the attack on the Massachusetts Regiment which made the North and the Federal Government hostile to the city. Before that event the people of the city had been maligned in the Northern press. A conspicuous instance of this was the story that the assassination of the President-elect as he passed through Baltimore was contemplated. There never was the slighest foundation for any such report, and yet Mr. Lincoln in going to Washington for his inauguration would go from Philadelphia to Harrisburg and thence to Baltimore by the Northern Central. The day fixed for his arrival in this city was Saturday, February 23d, at 11 -.30 A. M.

Lincoln's trip to Washington.

Mayor Brown was at Calvert station, accompanied by the