To Join This, Certain Troops
From Massachusetts Were Sent Down By The Usual Route, Via New York,
Philadelphia, And Baltimore; But On Their Reaching Baltimore By
Railway, The Mob Of That Town Refused To Allow Them To Pass
Through, - And A Fight Began.
Nine citizens were killed and two
soldiers, and as many more were wounded.
This, I think, was the
first blood spilt in the civil war; and the attack was first made
by the mob of the first slave city reached by the Northern
soldiers. This goes far to show, not that the border States
desired secession, but that, when compelled to choose between
secession and Union, when not allowed by circumstances to remain
neutral, their sympathies were with their sister slave States
rather than with the North.
Then there was a great running about of official men between
Baltimore and Washington, and the President was besieged with
entreaties that no troops should be sent through Baltimore. Now
this was hard enough upon President Lincoln, seeing that he was
bound to defend his capital, that he could get no troops from the
South, and that Baltimore is on the high-road from Washington both
to the West and to the North; but, nevertheless, he gave way. Had
he not done so, all Baltimore would have been in a blaze of
rebellion, and the scene of the coming contest must have been
removed from Virginia to Maryland, and Congress and the government
must have traveled from Washington north to Philadelphia.
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