History of Baltimore, Maryland, from its founding as a town to the current year, 1729-1898, including its early settlement and development; a description of its historic and interesting localities; political, military, civil, and religious statistcs; biographies of representative citizens, etc., etc, Part 19

Author: Shepherd, Henry Elliott, 1844-1929, ed. 4n
Publication date: 1898
Publisher: [Uniontown? Pa.] S.B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1344

USA > Maryland > Baltimore County > Baltimore City > History of Baltimore, Maryland, from its founding as a town to the current year, 1729-1898, including its early settlement and development; a description of its historic and interesting localities; political, military, civil, and religious statistcs; biographies of representative citizens, etc., etc > Part 19

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"RESOLVED, That no member of Con- gress representing a Southern constituency

shall again take his seat until a resolution is passed satisfactory to the South on the sub- ject of slavery."

I listened to his harangue, and when he had finished I obtained the floor, asking to be permitted to take part in the discussion. I determined at once to kill their treason- able plot, hatched by Calhoun, the Cataline of America, by asking questions.

I said to Mr. Pickens, "What do you pro- pose we shall do? Are we to tell the people that Republicanism is a failure? If you are for that, I am not. I came here to sustain and uphold American institutions-to de- fend the rights of the North as well as the South-to secure harmony and good fel- lowship between all sections of our com- mon country.

They dared not answer these questions. The Southern temper had not then been gotten up. As my questions were not an- swered, I moved an adjournment of the caucus sine die. Mr. Craig, of Virginia, seconded the motion and the company was broken up.

We returned to the House and Mr. In- gersoll, of Pennsylvania-a glorious pa- triot, then as now-introduced a resolution which temporarily calmed the excitement.

I am not afraid to address a Maryland au- dience, and to express my peculiar views on this exciting subject, even here in Balti- more. In all this question of slavery I boldly assert that the South has been the aggressor; not the people of the South, but the demagogues of the South.

I stand where Mr. Clay stod when he said, "So help me God, I will never vote for the introduction of slavery in a territory where it does not exist," and there I will ever stand so long as I have power to give

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utterance to my sentiments. I may be called a black Republican, an Abolitionist, but I care not. When I was charged in western Maryland as being unsafe, as being an Abolitionist, I was the owner of sixteen slaves. Why, sir, the puny fellows who thus assail me if blacked would not have sold for as much as some of my little black boys.

The principles on which I place myself have been sanctioned in western Maryland, and even from my boyhood have I main- tained them. They have been vindicated by the people selecting me as their representa- tive in Congress by 10,000 majority, given by a generous and confiding people, who on the same enunciation of these opinions chose me as the chief magistrate of Mary- land.

The secessionists of this State in control of its Legislature have in a most non-pa- triotic manner, sought to cripple the Gen- eral Government. I am favorable to the utmost exercise of all the powers of the Government to prevent such aims."

The address was of two hours duration, and took a wide range, discussing all ques- tions prominent at that time as National issues.

During the Gubernatorial canvass a meet- ing was held in Monument Square Monday evening, November 4th. William H. Col- lins presided. His fatherly speech is given: "People of the city of Baltimore-of all political parties, who are in favor of the Constitution of the United States and the Union of all the States thereunder, as the grand and master principle, to the promo- tion and perpetuation of which all political questions and opinions are to be held in strict subordination-I am here by your

side, with life and fortune. In this strug- gle, honor cannot be lost, though life and fortune may; for honor and love of country, like the twins of Siam, walk hand in hand, bound together by indissoluble ties.

In my younger days the country was di- vided into two grand old parties, one led by Clay and Webster, the other by the fiery courage of Andrew Jackson. In those days there was no question about the Union. All were for it. On this question those great leaders occupied common ground. When the Union was assailed the two great parties and their leaders stood shoulder to shoulder, forgetful, for the time, of all other issues. In reverent homage to this high example, we now propose to plant the standard of our country on this ancient and sacred platform. We invite all Breck- inridge and Douglas Democrats, who are faithful to the ancient Democratic creed, 'Our Union it must be preserved.' We invite the old line Whigs, the more modern Americans, and all others, without destruc- tion of party name, who are for the Consti- tution and liberty-and Union now and for- ever one and inseparable-to unite with us in one common effort to revive and restore the fading patriotism of our people, and to plant our country once more in the bonds of a common brotherhood, with her founda- tions resting deep and sure on the rock of the people's love. These are our objects; and he who can serve our country best and loves her most, let him be our leader, no matter where he lives, or by what name he may heretofore have been known.

Our object is to maintain the unity of our Government in the full extent of its Consti- tutional powers; to remove all just causes of complaint on the part of our people, whether

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in the South or the North, in the East or the West; to strike dead the hydra of aboli- tion and secession which is seeking to se- duce the loyalty of our people as did the serpent the innocence of our parents in the Garden of Eden; to win back, in a council of all the States of our Union, the affections of those who are discontented by every just, generous and brotherly concession.

Let no one propose to divide this, our country. Broad as is its area, and various as are its climate and productions, we are one people-bound together by the ties of common interest, blood, language, religion, laws and history. She was not the mother who consented to divide the living child. It was the counterfeit who said "Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it." The ear of the Hebrew King caught the tones of nature and he wisely decided that she was the mother who said "O, my Lord, give her the living child and in no wise slay it."

We have always been one people. In our Colonial days, in our revolutionary struggles, in the days of the old articles of confederation, in the declaration and sub- sequent acknowledgment of our independ- ence, under the present Constitution, we have always been one people. He who seeks to divide this people seeks to divide that which God has joined together by indis- soluble ties.

To the people of Baltimore, who, thirty- five years since, received me a flaxen-haired youth, and who have ever treated me with a kindness and indulgence far beyond my merits, until I am now a worn and shattered man; to the people of the Eastern shore, the home of my ancestors from the early period of its settlement, where, on the waters of the Pocomoke, the Annamesex,

the Monokin and the Wicomico, my young thoughts took their earliest form, where my affections, without a shadow of subsequent diminution, became bound up in my coun- try, whose history and early struggles it was my delight to study, whose future gran- deur was shadowed forth to my young im- agination to an extent scarcely equal to the records of her history since; to the State of Maryland, not the less dearly loved because it embraces these, the cradle of my youth and the home of my manhood; to these dear objects of my love-subject and sub- ordinate only to the sacred homage I owe to my country-the heart of the old man turns with an affection not so fresh but stronger and truer than in the days of his youth.

Bound as I am to the State of Maryland by every tie that can rivet human affection, I thank God that her safety and honor, in my best judgment, can only be maintained in the Union; thank God that I am not called on by that higher and holier alle- gience to my country, which I acknowledge and will ever pay, to sacrifice the welfare of the State of Maryland on the altar of my country's safety.

To the people of Baltimore, to the people of the Eastern and Western Shores, I here declare my deep conviction that your only safety is in the arms of the Union, under the Constitution. At the same time I choose -- for the sake of the rising generation, and in the humble hope that the words I now utter may rest in the memory of some of you after my heart has ceased to beat -- to say to you now, that in my poor judgment, American patriotism claims for our country a higher, holier, wider and more lofty alle- gience than that we owe to the State of our

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birth. Our country! Our Union! It is our glory, our strength, our shield, our sup- porter, our protector, and when I contem- plate its grandeur, I feel that my poor heart, when it gives its first deepest, truest and most reverential homage but feebly repays the unmeasured blessings it bestows.

"Allow me, fellow-citizens, to express my profound acknowledgments for the honor conferred by appointing me to preside over this meeting and to give utterance to my most fervent prayer to the Almighty God that he may be pleased to stand by us in these our terrible trials, as he did by our fathers in the days that are past, and that we may once more present to the world a noble example of Constitutional liberty, resting for its support on the affections of a people always faithful and loyal to the Constitution and the Union."

Augustus W. Bradford, the Union party nominee for Governor, said: "To be nomi- nated for chief magistrate of the State was an honor," but as far as personal considera- tions were concerned, he neither desired or solicited it. The office was surrounded by cares, responsibilities and difficulties that no man would seek; the circumstances of the times alone induced him to accept the nomi- nation.

From his youth up he had been taught to reverence the country in which he lived second only to that of the Deity, and he could not, if it was in his power, prove rec- reant to his duties in that respect. He had been taught to attribute all the blessings and privileges which the people of the coun- try enjoyed to the spirit of the Constitution and the importance of the Union of the States. It was a school in which all had received their political education, not only

those native to the soil, but those of all lands finding for the first time in their lives political protection for themselves and their interests.

He denounced the cunningly devised fa- ble of the secessionists as being more cruel than was even practiced by the ambitious tyrants of the Old World. Such were the great benefits of the country in the New World that the people scarcely knew they had a Government, and such was the confi- dence the Government had reposed in the people that it had scarcely ever resorted to a strong exhibition of its power. But a new policy of statesmanship had sprung up, and it was based upon a sort of individual com- bination to plunder the Government, to seize the public property, to rob and im- prison the people, and to declare that State sovereignty was superior in every respect to that of the whole country. There were acts of gross usurpation which should be con- demned and reprehended by every man.

It was not necessary to go beyond the bounds of Maryland for illustrations of the ruinous effects of secession. The old flag which had been baptised in blood and can- onized in the War of 1812 had been repudi- ated on the 19th of April, under the edict of a few miserable politicians. The patri- otic men of Massachusetts were cowardly assailed on their march to the Capitol. Some of the men who voted $500,000 for the de- fense of the city and $200,000 for the pur- chase of arms to prevent the passage of Government troops through the city, were now daily preaching peace, and praying at night that the morning's sun would witness the triumphal entry of Jeff Davis into Bal- timore.

The South fostered a spirit of aristocracy,

Engraved www. K.Campbell. New York

Johnf. Caldwell

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the very bane of a true Democratic form of Government, and that unholy ambition was the cause of secession.

Let Mr. Pratt and his aristocrats attempt to despise these men as mudsills of society, posterity will write them down as the heart of the Union. It had been alleged that Maryland would follow Virginia. Follow her? No, never! Abandon the Union? No! for in that Union she has advanced to such a degree of prosperity, her inhabitants enjoying such protection that they never would think of abandoning the glorious old flag.

Reverdy Johnson: "Our path is clear to remain faithful to duty and honor. To stand by with unfaltering attachment to the Un- ion."

October 9th, the Union Councilmen were elected by a vote of 9,250. At the election in November, Bradford, Union candidate for Governor, received 17,722 votes to 3,347 in the city, recorded for Howard. The re- mainder of the Union ticket was elected by similar majorities.

Hon. John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, arrived in Baltimore and stopped at the Eutaw House, where two thousand of his friends collected with a band and serenaded him in the evening, after which he was called upon for a speech. Mr. Brecken- ridge appeared upon the eastern portico of the hotel and was enthusiastically received. When he attempted to speak, the crowd which had increased rapidly, showed signs of turbulence. There were cheers for the Union, for "General Scott" and for "Henry Winter Davis." The friends of Mr. Breck- enridge loudly cheered him, the cheers last- ing several minutes. Upon their conclu- sion, he returned his thanks for the honor

paid him, and then referred to the position of Maryland, whose citizens had again and again been outraged in their dearest Consti- tutional rights, and in all respectful in- quiries as to the charges against those who had been suddenly torn from their homes and families, nothing but contemptuous re- sponses were returned. "Do you," he asked, "call this liberty?" [Cries of "No, no," with hisses and shouts of "Oh, dry up, you traitor," &c., &c.]

Resuming, Mr. Breckenridge claimed that he was "pleading not the cause of the rich and the powerful but of the poor and the weak." [A voice: "You lie and you know it," followed by general hisses.]

The speaker suggested that those who did not desire to hear him need not con- tinue present. This sentiment was cheered by a part of the audience and hissed by an- other portion of it. The two elements set in motion towards each other and the po- licemen engaged in using their espantoons.

Mr. Breckenridge said: "Those who in- terrupted him with opprobrious epithets and with hisses, were poor fellows who were tightening the degrading fetters that bound them," which was the signal for renewed cheering and hissing, followed by more dis- turbance.

"You poor fellows may hiss me," said the speaker, "but your children will bless me." [ Here a voice exclaimed: "Oh! go to South Carolina and be d-d to you." This propo- sition was discounted by vehement cheers for John C. Breckenridge. The police and the crowd who were creating the disorder made a rush toward the crowd who were cheering, when several men were severely beaten by the police. ]

Mr. Breckenridge: "If you don't intend

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to allow me to speak, then disperse the crowd. I did not volunteer to address you, remember. If I did not know that the squad of men now disturbing this assem- blage were no exponents of the sentiments of the people of Baltimore, I should despair of your city. Since the times when Consti- tutions were designed as limits to des- potic power, nothing so outrageous as those enacted by the administration had ever oc- curred. Liberty existed before the Consti- tution was formed, and whenever the issue is presented between that on the one hand, and a mere form of government on the other, the form would perish but the prin- ciple would survive."

At almost every sentence the speaker was interrupted with cheers and hisses; there were cheers for Jefferson Davis and cheers for Gen. Scott. A large number of men suffered at the hands of the police, so that Mr. Breckenridge sorrowfully exclaimed: "I feel personally responsible for the poor fellows so rudely treated. I grieve to think any one should be hurt on my account." The audience shouted "Go on Mr. Breck- enridge," and then three cheers were pro- posed and given for "Jeff Davis," and the "Southern Confederacy." A fight took place, which had the effect of thinning out the crowd, the timid ones making a stam- pede.

Mr. Breckenridge: "It is evident the dis- turbers are but few in numbers. Are they afraid to hear a Senator speak words of truth ?" The inquiry was met by personal allusions not complimentary to the speaker, which were replied to by persons in the crowd, "Oh! never mind them; they are from the almshouse and the jail; they are the Dodge police." These cries were re-

plied to in this wise, "You had us on the 19th of April, now we have got you." "Re- member the week of terror."

Mr. Breckenridge: "I have attentively watched the faces of those around me to- night, and I feel bound to say that this dis- turbance has been occasioned by a handful of men carrying sticks and wearing brass badges. Here, as in the United States Sen- ate, I will enter my protest against the usurpations of the administration, and I trust in God that the day is near at hand when the evil career of these bad men will receive a summary check." He then re- tired into the reception room, where he was surrounded by his friends. Loud calls were made for Mr. Vallandingham, who declined to appear.

I862.

A Union meeting was held Monday, July 28th, in Monument Square. Governor Bradford presided, and in the course of his speech said: "It is hardly necessary for me to tell you that there are continually lurking in our midst those who are constantly look- ing for some means to aid, comfort and as- sist those now seeking to crush us. The rebels who openly avow themselves com- mand your admiration, but the private, skulking, conspiring traitor, the moral guerilla of this war, is the most despicable of all traitors, without the courage to fight for his own country, or any other." The Governor spoke of his efforts to raise four regiments for the United States service, and said: "I have assurances that when these four regiments are completed, they shall form a Maryland brigade with a Maryland man in command."

Henry W. Hoffman hoped that the Union men throughout the State would realize

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the fact that the time had arrived for decided operation; there was a class of quasi Union men who were clamorous for the Constitu- tion as it was.

William H. Collins: "The Government has called for more troops in order to put down rebellion. It wants additional sol- diers in order to replace those lost in and about the Chickahominy."

Christopher C. Cox: "In such a contest there can be no neutrality. Every man is either a friend to the Government or aiding the insurrection." He closed with this peroration: "Be thou enthroned above that banner. God of battle, guard it with thy lightning, fan it with thy breeze, avenge it with thy thunder, may it advance as now, in a cause holy as thy light, may the hand that would dare pluck one star from its glory be palsied, may treason fall blighted beneath its shade."

One of the resolutions proposed a test oath to be administered by the military authorities to the disloyal, who were to sub- scribe to it or be sent South.

Wednesday, August 20th, Gen. Cochrane, was the guest of the municipality of Balti- more and made a speech in Monument Square, in the evening at a meeting pre- sided over by Mayor Chapman. Gen. Cochrane's speech was devoted to his prison experiences in the South, in favor of prose- cuting the war, and defending his Irish fel- low-countrymen from sympathy with the South. He was followed by Richard O'Gor- man, who discussed the subject of secession. Patrick McLoughlin, of the Baltimore Bar, called on his Irish fellow-citizens "to rally to the defense of the Union and the Con- stitution."

At a meeting of the Union State Central

Committee, Wednesday, August 26th, Mr. Swann was elected chairman of the commit- tee and Mr. J. V. L. Findlay secretary.

Mr. Swann spoke, saying: "Repelling again and again all claims on the part of the general Government, or any State Gov- ernment, to interfere in our domestic con- cerns, and deeply sympathizing with the holders of slave property, whose interests have become so seriously compromised by the existence of this war, I cannot but in- dulge the hope, that the impartial counsel we may give to the subject, will receive the consideration to which it is so eminently entitled.'

1863.

The members of the Unconditional Union State Central Committee held a meeting Wednesday, September 29th. This body was appointed by virtue of resolutions passed by the Union League State Conven- tion. They were the radical element of the Union party, and the advocates of uncon- ditional emancipation. William B. Hill was elected president, John Needles secretary, and Henry W. Hoffman treasurer. An ad- dress was issued to the people of Maryland, urging them to vote for the ticket which the State Convention had placed in the field.

Friday, September IIth, the Union State Central Committee issued an address to the people of the State, signed by Thomas Swann, John P. Kennedy, Columbus O'Donnell, John B. Seidenstricker, Thomas C. James, George Manly, Augustus M. Price and John V. L. Findlay, in which they expressed themselves conservatively on the subject of the extinction of slavery. They said: "The only regular and Constitutional method of dealing with a subject like this

HISTORY OF BALTIMORE, MARYLAND.

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is by direct appeal to the people, in the mode which they have chosen to indicate. Any effort to participate in a speedy settlement of the question, unless by common consent, is hardly likely to receive the countenance of any large portion of our citizens either for or against slavery in Maryland." The views set forth in the foregoing address condemned the advocates of peremptory emancipation, and declared "that Maryland would never consent to be driven by vio- lence, in the regulation of her domestic concerns."

Tuesday, September 15th, the Uncondi- tional Union party issued an address to the people of the State, which was signed by William B. Hill, Henry W. Hoffman, Hor- ace Abbott, James E. Dwinelle, S. F. Streeter, John A. Needles, Robert Tyson, Milton Whitney, William H. Shipley and William H. Baltzell. There was no dodg- ing the question with bated breath, but the planting of themselves firmly on the policy of President Lincoln on the subject of emancipation, and favoring the proposition for a State Convention.

The 23d of June Henry H. Goldsborough was nominated for Comptroller and William L. W. Seabrook for Commissioner of Land Office by the Unconditional Union party. The address to the people pronounced "slavery already dead, and that only the skeleton was left. The sooner the skeleton is removed the better it will be for the true interests of the State and Nation. At the same time, we are fully persuaded that this can only be accomplished by at once bring- ing the people face to face with it, in the election of such men only as are willing to discharge their whole Constitutional duty, by accepting their full measure of respon-

sibility in calling a Constitutional Conven- tion at the earliest moment practicable." The address was lengthy, and in details bristling with points unanswerable. The is- sue between the Unconditional and Condi- tional Union parties had now become a wide gulf. The Conditional Union men pruned the regular ticket of the names not satisfactory to them and nominated Reverdy Johnson, Jr., for Judge of the Circuit Court against William Daniels, who was the can- didate of the Unconditional Union party. William Alexander had been regularly nom- inated for Judge by the City Convention, but being objectionable to both factions of the party, they made nominations against him.

The evening of Wednesday, October 28th, a meeting of Unconditional Unionists was held in Monument Square. The bright gas jets over the stand formed these words, "The Union, Emancipation, Golds- borough." The Eighteenth Ward had a transparency on which was emblazoned: "Freedom dawns in Maryland. We go for emancipation. There is but one Union ticket." The Washington Union League bore a transparency at the head of their line, on which was inscribed: "Slavery de- grades labor. No fellowship with Treason. No parley with Traitors."

John Lee Chapman presided.

Henry Winter Davis: "We have pre- sented resolutely the question of emancipa- tion, and on the 4th of November twenty thousand majority will ratify in advance the opinion of the people of Maryland.

"Three years ago Abraham Lincoln re- ceived in the State of Maryland only about 2,000 votes; now his administration receives a support of three-fourths of all the people

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in Maryland, receives the unanimous sup- port of every loyal man in Maryland, and stands opposed by no one but the traitors of Maryland, and now instead of being a small fragment of your population, strug- gling for recognition, we have to state that the administration is supported by the whole body of the people of Maryland, and the ad- ministration recognizes those people as its supporters."

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Author: Shepherd, Henry Elliott, 1844-1929, ed. 4n Publication date: 1898 Publisher: [Uniontown? Pa.] S.B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1344

Author: Shepherd, Henry Elliott, 1844-1929, ed. 4n
Publication date: 1898
Publisher: [Uniontown? Pa.] S.B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1344