On the 18th of April, 1860, Governor Hicks issued a proclamation to the people of Maryland, begging them to be quiet, the chief object of which, however, was that of promising that no troops should be sent from their State, unless with the object of guarding the neighboring City of Washington—­a promise which he had no means of fulfilling, seeing that the President of the United States is the commander-in-chief of the army of the nation, and can summon the militia of the several States.  This proclamation by the Governor to the State was immediately backed up by one from the Mayor of Baltimore to the city, in which he congratulates the citizens on the Governor’s promise that none of their troops are to be sent to another State; and then he tells them that they shall be preserved from the horrors of civil war.

But on the very next day the horrors of civil war began in Baltimore.  By this time President Lincoln was collecting troops at Washington for the protection of the capital; and that army of the Potomac, which has ever since occupied the Virginian side of the river, was in course of construction.  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.  “They shall not come through Baltimore,” said Mr. Lincoln.  “But they shall come through the State of Maryland.  They shall be passed over Chesapeake Bay by water to Annapolis, and shall come up by rail from thence.”  This arrangement was as distasteful to the State of Maryland as the other; but Annapolis is a small town without a mob, and the Marylanders had no means of preventing the passage of the troops.  Attempts