without difficulty by prudent indirection. 4
1 The Tennessee vote, June 8th, upon separation stood as an aggre
gate 104,913 in favor, to 47,238 opposed. But in East Tennessee
14,780 voted for separation and 32,923 against it. A union conven
tion held at Greenville, June 17th, declared unhesitating loyalty to the
Union, denounced separation as illegal and impolitic, and made over
tures to Congress for recognition as a separate State. 23 Harper, 404.
2 1 Moore, 201, 202 ; Am. Cycl. 1861, 676-685. John Bell, of this
State, in whom the conservatives of the nation had so strenuously con
fided, by making him their Presidential candidate in 1860, caused much
disappointment by his vacillation and final defection.
8 See section 5, post.
* 4 N. & H. 92 ; 1 Moore, doc. 165. The governor in this State per-
42 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
The refusal of most border State governors to march their
militia for purposes of coercion, caused such changes in
assigning the several quotas that the excess of free State
volunteers became partially absorbed. 1 But no matter how
great the demand of the general government in this stirring
exigency, the earnestness of the free States to supply and
send forward was much greater. Among war governors this
crisis made famous were Morgan of New York, Curtin of
Pennsylvania, Andrew of Massachusetts, Sprague of Khode
Island, Blair of Michigan, Morton of Indiana, Kandall of
Wisconsin, Dennison of Ohio, and Yates of Illinois. In the
uprising of a mighty people Massachusetts among the old
seaboard States led the van, favored by the wisdom and
foresight of her new executive, who had since January
caused the militia to be placed upon a war footing so that
they were uniformed, organized, and ready to march at once.
Four State regiments were summoned to Boston, on the day
of the proclamation, to meet the original call for half that
number; and all were accepted by telegram from
Washington the very next day. The companies came
marching to Boston Common, uniformed. Two of those
regiments sped by water to Fortress Monroe, and were the
first of loyal State volunteers to land on Virginian soil.
The gallant Oth Massachusetts, recruited from the neigh
borhood of Concord and Lexington, among whose men and
officers were scions of the famous stock of 1775, hastened
overland to the defence of Washington, to spill on their
way the first blood of this revolution, as minute-men, their
mitted volunteer companies to tender their services directly to the
United States, and thus avoided an issue.
1 The original assignment of State quotas at the War Department,
April 15th, to constitute the required 75,000 men, was as follows :
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware,
Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, one regiment
each ; Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Tennessee, two regiments
each ; New Jersey, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, four regi
ments each ; Illinois and Indiana, six regiments each ; Virginia, three
regiments ; New York, seventeen- regiments ; Pennsylvania, sixteen
regiments ; Ohio, thirteen regiments.
1861. THE BALTIMORE RIOT. 43
sires, had spilt on the identical 19th of April in the pre
vious century. Marching down Broadway from the cars
about sunrise of the 18th, this earliest visible band of
defenders was greeted in New York metropolis by throngs
of early risers who marked the fine, soldierly bearing of the
men, and their various uniforms covered with long gray over
coats. But a far different reception awaited the 6th on the
next forenoon at Baltimore, where, after the custom of travel
in those days, cars were hauled separately by horses over
street tracks from the northern depot on President Street to
the southern or Camden station. An excited and ignorant
mob blocked the streets, after the earlier cars had passed
by, laden, with troops, and forced the last three companies
to march about half a mile, exposed to showers of missiles,
and a scattered musketry from the houses which they hastily
returned as they advanced. 1 This collision, the earliest with
loss of life, is memorable in history as the Baltimore riot ;
lawless turbulence occasioned it, not design, and the good
people of that city deplored the incident. The regiment,
reunited by noon, at Camden station, proceeded by rail to
Washington, without further casualty, and quartered over
night in the Senate wing of the Capitol. 2 This Massachu
setts 6th, notwithstanding the long distance traversed from
New England, was the first regiment, really organized and
equipped, to reach the Potomac under the President s
summons ; and the only corps preceding it consisted of
some three or four hundred immobilized Pennsylvanians,
whom Governor Curtin had despatched to Washington over
1 Of the Massachusetts troops four were killed and thirty-six,
wounded. How many the casualties on the other side is unknown,
but one prominent citizen among the chance lookers-on lost bis life.
2 For full account of this riot, see 4 N. & H. c. 6 ; 1 W. Schouler s
Massachusetts, 92-97 ; Brown s Baltimore ; Hanson s Sixth Regiment,
25-58. " I pray you," telegraphed Governor Andrew to Mayor Brown,
" to cause the bodies of our Massachusetts soldiers, dead in Baltimore,
to be immediately laid out, preserved with ice, and tenderly sent for
ward by express to me." The authorities of Baltimore responded
suitably, and a year later the Maryland legislature appropriated seven
thousand dollars for the families of the victims.
44 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
the State line, the day before, to be armed, equipped, and
put in regimental condition by the War Department. 1
The spontaneous spark of passion made disunion rampant
for a time in Baltimore, for here was a desperate rowdy
element, and the Southern cause, besides, had many sym
pathizers. On the afternoon of the riot, at a mass-meet
ing held on Monument Square, both Governor Hicks and
Mayor Brown pledged themselves publicly that no more
troops should be sent through that city to coerce a sister
State. The mayor, who in the morning had made honest
effort to protect the soldiers while they inarched, sanctioned
the destruction of the railroad bridges north of the city,
to force the stoppage of all trains ; the governor, in his dis
tress, implored the President to make pacific settlement
with the South, to compromise, to refer the pending
national issue to the arbitration of Lord Lyon, the British
minister. 2 Neither of these men, we imagine, failed in
loyal sentiment to the Union, but both felt the peculiar
environment of Southern interests, and bent before a tem
pest that nearly swept the State from its safe moorings.
For Baltimore was the one populous community of this
genial and hospitable State, and in its society surged all the
crests of opposition to Lincoln s policy of coercion, from
dislike to the maddest avowal of secession and Southern
sympathies. Allowance should be made for an executive
under such conditions ; and of all governors in the border
slave States, except Delaware, at this crisis, Hicks was the
only one tractable and true, and his record, on the whole, in
time of trial, did him lasting honor. President Lincoln,
who appreciated his good intentions, and humored his
moods, yielded far enough, upon General Scott s advice,
to march troops around Baltimore for a time, instead of
through it, on their way to the capital. The 8th Massa
chusetts and that pride of the Empire State militia, the
New York 7th, sailed by water transports from quiet
1 2 Seward, 548.
2 1 Moore, docs. 78-80, 133 ; 4 N. & H. 119-128 ; 2 W. R. 12-15,
68.
1861. ROUTE THROUGH ANNAPOLIS. 45
Perryville, where they left the cars, to Maryland s quaint
historic capital, Annapolis. 1 Upon these regiments as
pioneers it devolved to repair together the tracks and
locomotives of the cross railroad which tapped the thorough
fare from Baltimore to Washington there was at this
period but one at Annapolis Junction. Annapolis offered
no positive resistance, and through the sparse, flat country
of this new progression, no enemy came in sight. The work
was slow and tedious, but the rich scions of the New York
regiment fraternized with the hardy toilers of the Massa
chusetts, and the job was done.
At Annapolis Junction, trains for the capital, sent by
Scott, were kept ready and waiting. The New York 7th
reached Washington on Friday, April 26th, and the 8th
Massachusetts with other troops followed the next day.
Washington, in the meanwhile, cut otf for nearly a week
from the outer world after the Baltimore riot, felt all the
anxieties of isolation. Such news as reached the Govern
ment from the Virginia side were disheartening enough ; and
but faint conception was gained of the patriotic uprising
at the North and its magnitude, when the mails and tele
graphs were completely cut otf. National officials and the
inhabitants prepared for a siege. Stores of flour and
grain at Georgetown were detained from shipment and im
pressed; the treasury with its vaults of treasured coin was
guarded by barricades, and sentinels paced the corridors,
among stacks of rifles ; government clerks organized with
the citizens as military companies. In the great east room
of the White House an extemporized soldiery drilled at
night under the gorgeous chandelier and made their bivouac
on the velvet carpet. " Why don t they come ? " murmured
Lincoln repeatedly, as he paced his chamber in agitation,
while nothing could be seen or heard of the volunteers
ordered round Baltimore. But when at last the superb
1 During the Civil War the naval academy was temporarily moved
from Annapolis to Newport, Rhode Island ; but later, at Maryland s
earnest request, Congress restored it to the Annapolis site. Hauling
into the bay the old frigate Constitution (here as a practice ship) was
an incident of the tarry at Annapolis.
46 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP, i
New York 7th, under its commander, Colonel Lefferts,
marched in orderly step with full ranks up Pennsylvania
Avenue, towards the executive reservation, to the loud
music of its regimental band, gloom and depression van
ished ; cheer upon cheer went up, and Washington s whole
population poured out for a joyous welcome. 1 This was
the escort proper of that Northern phalanx of defenders
whose numbers increased daily until the national capital,
safe from hostile surprise, began to wear the new aspect of
a camping rendezvous. 2
With the Massachusetts quota, Governor Andrew had
despatched, as brigade commander, General Benjamin F.
Butler of the State militia, an able and adroit practitioner
at the bar, a Democratic delegate in 1860 who at Charles
ton had voted repeatedly for Jefferson Davis as the party
nominee, but now a most zealous convert, such as the ad
ministration strongly desired. He had a temperament to
make friends and enemies equally intense in their regard.
His striking physiognomy and bearing, with an obliquity of
vision, bespoke great shrewdness and craft, self-confidence,
quickness of humor, and disrespect for authority. Having
directed at Annapolis with the 8th Massachusetts, Butler
was now detailed to guard the railroad connections which
flanked Baltimore, and gradually to reopen a free highway.
Maryland needed, just now, close watching, for her accession
to the Southern Confederacy was insidiously attempted. 3
Governor Hicks, while in a yielding frame of mind, had been
persuaded to call an extra session of the legislature, and that
April- session meant mischief. President Lincoln watched
December, the movement and prepared to counteract disloyal
designs by military stress. Construing the Federal Consti
tution in favor of his executive discretion in the existing
1 See for full and lively details, 4 N. & H. c. 7 ; 2 Seward, 559, 560 ;
Atlantic Monthly, June, 1861 ; Chittenden s Recollections, c. 18 ; 1
W. Schouler s Massachusetts, 98-105.
2 "Ten thousand of our troops," writes Seward, April 27th, "are
arrived here, and the city is considered safe." 2 Seward, 560.
8 2 W. R. 773.
1861. MARYLAND SAVED FROM SECESSION. 47
emergency, lie authorized General Scott and his deputies to
suspend the writ of habeas corpus. On the 4th of May, But
ler advanced with his military force to Relay House, nine
miles south of Baltimore, menacing the city and controlling
the railway approaches. The Maryland legislature convened
at Frederick, April 2Gth, and remained in session until May
14th ; disunion projects were broached, but no decisive step
was taken. Late on the evening of the 13th, Butler made
a sudden entry into Baltimore, which was unopposed.
Proceeding next to make vindictive civil arrests, he was
promptly displaced by General Scott, who deputed this
"high and delicate trust" of suspending habeas corpus to
Cadwalader of Pennsylvania, another militia general. 1 in
vain did Chief Justice Taney record his protest against
such suspension, when the mandate he issued on his circuit
was disregarded at Fort McHenry in a test case. 2 Nathaniel
P. Banks, who took command still later, commissioned a
major-general, pursued by orders from Washington the same
stern military course. He broke up Baltimore s police board,
whose designs were believed disloyal. He prevented the
State legislature from meeting once more in September by
boldly arresting its disunion members and preventing a
quorum. But the secession spirit of Maryland waned
speedily, as the popular vote for Congress on the 13th of
June first indicated, and the " Star Spangled Banner " State
could not be seduced by lyric or artful flattery from her
national allegiance. 3 All this harsh discipline though
some of her best citizens deprecated it seemed needful to
bring Marylanders to their duty and interest before worse
should befall. Arbitrary arrest was less terrible to bear than
the drenching of their soil in the vain effort to block the
1 See 2 W. R. C18-G39 ; 4 N. & H. c. 8 ; 1 Am. Cycl. 1861, 444. Gen
eral Butler, May 18th, received an important command at Fortress
Monroe, and soon after was promoted to be major-general of volunteers.
2 Tyler s Taney, 640-659 ; 4 N. & H. 174-178.
3 "Maryland, my Maryland," borrowed the melody of " Lauriger
Horatius," a college song popular a few years earlier. And see plausi
ble letter from Jefferson Davis, reported to the Maryland legislature in
June, 1861.
48 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
way to the Potomac. By midsummer, transit from the
North was restored, and troops passed through Baltimore to
the nation s capital unmolested. Hicks in the autumn was
reflected governor by a very large majority, and when in
December a newly chosen legislature, loyal in its composition,
convened at Annapolis, this executive, no longer wavering,
announced with emphasis that Maryland had no sympathy
with rebellion, but desired to do her full share in the duty
of suppressing it. 1
While volunteers of the Eastern and Middle States has
tened to defend the nation s capital, close at hand, the
great outpouring of the northwestern States tended rather
to points of danger in the Mississippi Valley, these earliest
levies aiding the Union element of Missouri, Kentucky,
and Western Virginia in military operations to be described
later. Meanwhile the Confederate Congress at Montgomery
had, in prompt extra session, supplied new sinews of war
to the insurgent government, whose jurisdiction immensely
widened with the new accession of border States. In view
of such gigantic resistance and of the enthusiastic rally at
the North to sustain his authority, President Lincoln exerted
further his executive power in anticipation of the legislation
sure to follow when Congress should meet in July. A new
call issued May .3d for 65,000 more troops, for " the speedi
est possible restoration of peace and order." Two-thirds of
this force were specified as State volunteers, and the rest as
regulars. Volunteers were henceforth to enlist for "three
years unless sooner discharged," a solemn change, as it
proved, in the contract of service; yet so passionate was
the desire to take up arms for the Government, that whole
regiments, which had been offered for three months under
the April call, voted unanimously to accept the new terms
1 2 W. R. 138-156 ; Am. Cycl. 1861, 444-448. The four Maryland
regiments under the President s first call were permitted to serve sim
ply for home defence and the preservation of our Federal five-mile
square, once within Maryland jurisdiction ; they were not required to
" subjugate " other States. 1 Moore, 245.
1861. THE THREE YEARS CALL. 49
and be enrolled. 1 Many noble souls found in this substituted
term their death-warrant. The amended force thus called
for matched fairly in number the troops that President Davis
had purposed organizing.
This proclamation of May 3d asked for 18,000 men to
increase the navy. 2 While so many naval officers had re
signed, their crews in general remained faithful. Two days
after President Lincoln s earliest summons of an armed
force, Davis by proclamation offered letters of marque and
reprisal, that privateers might ravage Northern commerce.
To this Lincoln promptly responded on the 19th of April,
by proclaiming a blockade of all ports within the insurrec
tionary States, a competent force to be posted for its enforce
ment. All who should molest the national commerce of the
United States were threatened with death, the penalty of
piracy. 3 In maritime strength at this age free States had
vastly the advantage.
De Tocqueville once predicted of the American Union
that, if put to the test, it would prove powerless against
State pressure, and incapable of sustained exertion. It
was, he thought, a vast body which could present no definite
object to patriotic feeling. Our Civil War disproved that
assertion, especially in these earlier months, though North
ern enthusiasm kept still in reserve another strong incentive,
1 Among such regiments was that raised in Boston by Fletcher
Webster, the last surviving son of the transcendent orator. He was
killed in battle in 1862, at the head of his command.
2 The whole Union military force, prior to the assembling of Con
gress in July, may be thus reckoned :
Regular army before April 14 17,113
Three months volunteers 75,000
Volunteers under May 3d call 42,034
Regulars under May 3d call 22,714
Total 156,861
The United States navy, prior to May 3, is computed at 7,600 men.
See 4 N. & II. c. 14. For apportionment of volunteers under the new
call, see 1 Moore, doc. 237.
3 See 12 U. S. Stats. Appx. By proclamation, April 27, this block
ade was further extended to the ports of Virginia and North Carolina.
50 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. I.
should the South fight too obstinately. Seventy years of
national development had knit the homogeneous free States
and the grand majority of our people too closely in affection
and pride to permit that the power, the glory, and the solid
interests of so grand a Union should be sacrificed by any
minority combination of States or individuals.
SECTION III.
THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.
Our former volumes have traced that growing antagonism
between Northern and Southern States of this American
Union, between slave and free industrial systems, which
the spirit of national harmony and concession failed at
length to compose. 1 Admirably, no doubt, did the conven
tion of 1787 manage that antagonism for thirteen States,
already inseparably united in common defence and welfare,
that had gone shoulder to shoulder through an armed revo
lution for a common independence. For the unsettled
territory to the westward then remaining, a partition was
mutually arranged, whereby the sectional equipoise of sys
tems might be preserved until haply slavery should dis
perse in the sunbeams of another civilization. But when,
under Southern lead and Southern Presidents, this Union
enlarged its domains, first passing beyond the Mississippi
River, our earliest western boundary, to the Rocky range,
next spanning the continent with a broad belt from ocean
to ocean, besides dominating the Gulf, so vast an acquisi
tion with new Territories and potential States, projected the
strife of systems into an area far greater than was sound
or safe. For long ere this expansion a new cotton culture
hardened the heart of the South, and made a large section
of adjacent States firm in the espousal of slavery. It was
not devilish suggestion, but the voice of honest prophecy,
that by this time foreboded that so grand an experiment of
confederated Union could not forever continue half slave
1 Vols. I-V, passim.
1801. THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. Ol
and half free, but that one system or the other the the
ory of free labor or of fixed caste must finally dominate
throughout the country. As a practical issue within our
national Territories, the fight for five years, which now
ended in the admission of Kansas as a free State, settled
the supremacy. Slavery was worsted, and would be again
by free labor in any future contention for populating the
virgin soil. Had the South but yielded to the logic of
facts, slavery as then existing in the States would have
remained unmolested, by force of the constitutional bond
and Northern toleration, and there need have been no civil
war. But the pride of the slaveholder was wounded by
this prohibition to expand. He would not permit his insti
tution to exist by sufferance within present limits; the rays
of a disapproving civilization beat down too hot for him.
He had come to believe at this epoch in the righteousness
of his system ; and, rather than live as one of the minority,
he would found a new plantation empire and propagate sla
very as he chose. It was thus that he dogmatized. Against
the philanthropy of the age, w r hether in the New World or
the Old, he believed he could balance its grossest material
ism. Rather than learn to readjust economic and indus
trial conditions, he would rupture the Union. " Cotton was
king," and he had been taught to consider that cotton culture
and slave labor were inseparable.
Virginia and South Carolina were seen in the convention
f 17S7, exerting each a positive influence in shaping out
the Federal plan of Union ; the former State, then in the
plenitude of her leadership, keeping the word " slave " out
of a permanent instrument, and using every palliative ; the
latter bent on gaining for slavery all she could under that
instrument, and frankly confessing that she felt no shame.
Seventy more years and South Carolina, rather than Vir
ginia, was the guide of the slave section. It was in the
Palmetto State, where blacks now outnumbered the whites,
that an oligarchy of the master race fully monopolized
political power. It was South Carolina that first made
cotton a staple, and reared Calhoun, whose subtle and
ingenious brain devised the whole mischievous programme
52 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. 1.
of a separate establishment. South Carolina was long eager
to try conclusions with the Union. Her tariff nullifica
tion in 1833, then denounced as a heresy by most sister
States, gave partial victory. Next in 1850, though thwarted
in disunion efforts by Clay s compromise measures, she
brought a large fraction of her section to the Calhoun pos
tulate, that a State might with constitutional right resolve
itself out of the Union. Finally, in 1860, after Lincoln s
election to the Presidency, she plunged boldly into the
vortex of secession and bade the other cotton States follow.
The slave population of the United States was, in 1860,
near four millions, and its money valuation not far from
twenty-five hundred millions. Ignoring, then, the moral
side of the question, so vast a moneyed interest was an
adequate cause of anxiety and preparation. 1 Southern men
believed that, with such bitterness of feeling between the
sections, separation was sure to come, and that, being inevi
table, it would be better accomplished at once than after,
when the disparity in population would be greater. There
was no concealment of warlike preparations in the cotton
States after Lincoln s election ; men were openly enlisted,
national forts and public property were seized ; but there
was then no chief magistrate in Washington to rally North
ern sentiment or teach loyal people their duty by an object-
lesson.
There was something of a conspiracy, however, in the
present Southern movement for breaking up the Union.
How far the " Knights of the Golden Circle," a secret order,
may have operated to this end is unknown. Through the