It Was Also Declared In Baltimore
That Men Engaged To Promote The Northern Party Were Permitted To
Vote Five Or
Six times over, and the enormous number of votes
polled on the government side gave some coloring to the statement.
At any rate, an election carried under General Dix's guns cannot be
regarded as an open election. It was out of the question that any
election taken under such circumstances should be worth anything as
expressing the minds of the people. Red and white had been
declared to be the colors of the Confederates, and red and white
had of course become the favorite colors of the Baltimore ladies.
Then it was given out that red and white would not be allowed in
the streets. Ladies wearing red and white were requested to return
home. Children decorated with red and white ribbons were stripped
of their bits of finery - much to their infantile disgust and
dismay. Ladies would put red and white ornaments in their windows,
and the police would insist on the withdrawal of the colors. Such
was the condition of Baltimore during the past winter.
Nevertheless cakes and ale abounded; and though there was deep
grief in the city, and wailing in the recesses of many houses, and
a feeling that the good times were gone, never to return within the
days of many of them, still there existed an excitement and a
consciousness of the importance of the crisis which was not
altogether unsatisfactory. Men and women can endure to be ruined,
to be torn from their friends, to be overwhelmed with avalanches of
misfortune, better than they can endure to be dull.
Baltimore is, or at any rate was, an aspiring city, proud of its
commerce and proud of its society. It has regarded itself as the
New York of the South, and to some extent has forced others so to
regard it also. In many respects it is more like an English town
than most of its Transatlantic brethren, and the ways of its
inhabitants are English. In old days a pack of fox hounds was kept
here - or indeed in days that are not yet very old, for I was told
of their doings by a gentleman who had long been a member of the
hunt. The country looks as a hunting country should look, whereas
no man that ever crossed a field after a pack of hounds would feel
the slightest wish to attempt that process in New England or New
York. There is in Baltimore an old inn with an old sign, standing
at the corner of Eutaw and Franklin Streets, just such as may still
be seen in the towns of Somersetshire, and before it there are to
be seen old wagons, covered and soiled and battered, about to
return from the city to the country, just as the wagons do in our
own agricultural counties. I have seen nothing so thoroughly
English in any other part of the Union.
But canvas-back ducks and terrapins are the great glories of
Baltimore.
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