It is a mistake to suppose that they were inveigled into secession by ambitious leaders. On the contrary, it is probable that they were not as much under the influence of leaders as the men of '76, and that there were fewer disaffected among them. At times the scales trembled in the balance. There are always mistakes in war. It is an easy and ungrateful task to point them out afterward. We can now see that grave errors, both financial and military, were made, and that opportunities were thrown away. How far these went to settle the contest, we can never certainly know, but it does not need great boldness to assert that the belief which the Southern people entertained that they were strong enough to defend themselves, was not unreasonable.

The determination of the South to maintain slavery was undoubtedly the main cause of secession, but another deep and underlying cause was the firm belief of the Southern people in the doctrine of States' rights, and their jealousy of any attack upon those rights. Devotion to their State first of all, a conviction that paramount obligation-in case of any conflict of allegiance—was due not to the Union but to the State, had been part of the political creed of very many in the South ever since the adoption of the Constitution. An ignoble love of slavery was not the general and impelling motive. The slaveholders, who were largely in the minority, acted as a privileged class always does act. They were determined to maintain their privileges at all hazards. But they, as well as the great mass of the people who had no personal interest in slavery, fought the battles of the war with the passionate earnestness of men who believed with an undoubting conviction that they were the defenders not only of home rule and of their firesides, but also of their constitutional rights.

And behind the money question, the constitutional question and the moral question, there was still another of the gravest import. Was it possible for two races nearly equal in number, but widely different in character and civilization, to live together in a republic in peace and equality of rights without mingling in blood? The answer of the Southern man was, "It is not possible."

CHAPTER III.

MARYLAND'S DESIRE FOR PEACE.-EVENTS WHICH FOLLOWED THE ELECTION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.-HIS PROCLAMATION CALLING FOR TROOPS.THE CITY AUTHORITIES AND POLICE OF BALTIMORE.-INCREASING EXCITEMENT IN BALTIMORE.

I now come to consider the condition of affairs in Maryland. As yet the Republican party had obtained a very slight foothold. Only 2,294 votes had in the whole State been cast for Mr. Lincoln. Her sympathies were divided between the North and the South, with a decided preponderance on the Southern side. For many years her conscience had been neither dead nor asleep on the subject of slavery. Families had impoverished themselves to free their slaves. In 1860 there were 83,942 free colored people in Maryland and 87,189 slaves, the white population being 515,918. Thus there were nearly as many free as slaves of the colored race. Emancipation, in spite of harsh laws passed to discountenance it, had rapidly gone on. In the northern part of the State and in the city of Baltimore there were but few slaveholders, and the slavery was hardly more than nominal. The patriarchal institution, as it has been derisively called, had a real existence in many a household. Not a few excellent people have I known and respected who were born and bred in slavery and had been freed by their masters. In 1831 the State incorporated the Maryland Colonization Society, which founded on the west coast of Africa a successful republican colony of colored people, now known as the State of Maryland

in Liberia, and for twenty-six years, and until the war broke out, the State contributed $10,000 a year to its support. This amount was increased by the contributions of individuals. The board, of which Mr. John H. B. Latrobe was for many years president, was composed of our best citizens. A code of laws for the government of the colony was prepared by the excellent and learned lawyer, Hugh Davey Evans.

While there was on the part of a large portion of the people a deep-rooted and growing dislike to slavery, agitation on the subject had not commenced. It was in fact suppressed by reason of the violence of Northern abolitionists. with whom the friends of emancipation were not able to unite.

It is not surprising that Maryland was in no mood for war, but that her voice was for compromise and peace-compromise and peace at any price consistent with honor.

The period immediately following the election of Mr. Lincoln in November, 1860, was throughout the country one of intense agitation and of important events. A large party at the North preferred compromise to war, even at the cost of dissolution of the Union. If dissolution began, no one could tell where it would stop. South Carolina seceded on the 17th of December, 1860. Georgia and the five Gulf States soon followed. On the 6th of January, 1861, Fernando Wood, mayor of the city of New York, sent a message to the common council advising that New York should secede and become a free city.1

1 John P. Kennedy, of Baltimore, the well-known author, who had been member of Congress and Secretary of the Navy, published early in 1861 a pamphlet entitled "The Border States, Their Power and Duty in the Present Disordered Condition of the Country." His idea was that if concert of action could be had between the Border States and concurring States of the South which had not seceded, stipulations might be obtained from the Free States, with the aid of Congress, and, if necessary, an amendment of

On February the 9th, Jefferson Davis was elected President of the Southern Confederacy, a Confederacy to which other States would perhaps soon be added. But the Border States were as yet debatable ground; they might be retained by conciliation and compromise or alienated by hostile measures, whether directed against them or against the seceded States. In Virginia a convention had been called to consider the momentous question of union or secession, and an overwhelming majority of the delegates chosen were in favor of remaining in the Union. Other States were watching Virginia's course, in order to decide whether to stay in the Union or go out of it with her.

On the 12th and 13th of April occurred the memorable bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter. On the 15th of April, President Lincoln issued his celebrated proclamation calling out seventy-five thousand militia, and appealing "to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity and existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured." What

the Constitution, which would protect the rights of the South; but if this failed, that the Border States and their allies of the South would then be forced to consider the Union impracticable and to organize a separate confederacy of the Border States, with the association of such of the Southern and Free States as might be willing to accede to the proposed conditions. He hoped that the Union would thus be "reconstructed by the healthy action of the Border States." The necessary result, however, would have been that in the meantime three confederacies would have been in existence. And yet Mr. Kennedy had always been a Union man, and when the war broke out was its consistent advocate.

These proposals, from such different sources as Fernando Wood and John P. Kennedy, tend to show the uncertainty and bewilderment which had taken possession of the minds of men, and in which few did not share to a greater or less degree.