were made to refuse the use of the Annapolis branch railway, but General Butler had the arranging of that.  General Butler was a lawyer from Boston, and by no means inclined to indulge the scruples of the Marylanders who had so roughly treated his fellow-citizens from Massachusetts.  The troops did therefore pass by Annapolis, much to the disgust of the State.  On the 27th of April, Governor Hicks, having now had a sufficiency of individual responsibility, summoned the legislature of which he had expressed so bad an opinion; but on this occasion he omitted to repeat that opinion, and submitted his views in very proper terms to the wisdom of the senators and representatives.  He entertains, as he says, an honest conviction that the safety of Maryland lies in preserving a neutral position between the North and the South.  Certainly, Governor Hicks, if it were only possible!  The legislature again went to work to prevent, if it might be prevented, the passage of troops through their State; but luckily for them, they failed.  The President was bound to defend Washington, and the Marylanders were denied their wish of having their own fields made the fighting ground of the civil war.

That which appears to me to be the most remarkable feature in all this is the antagonism between United States law and individual State feeling.  Through the whole proceeding the Governor and the State of Maryland seemed to have considered it quite reasonable to oppose the constitutional power of the President and his government.  It is argued in all the speeches and written documents that were produced in Maryland at the time, that Maryland was true to the Union; and yet she put herself in opposition to the constitutional military power of the President.  Certain Commissioners went from the State legislature to Washington in May, and from their report it appears that the President had expressed himself of opinion that Maryland might do this or that “as long as she had not taken and was not about to take a hostile attitude to the Federal government!” From which we are to gather that a denial of that military power given to the President by the Constitution was not considered as an attitude hostile to the Federal government.  At any rate, it was direct disobedience to Federal law.  I cannot but revert from this to the condition of the Fugitive Slave Law.  Federal law, and indeed the original constitution, plainly declare that fugitive slaves shall be given up by the free-soil States.  Massachusetts proclaims herself to be specially a Federal law-loving State.  But every man in Massachusetts knows that no judge, no sheriff, no magistrate, no policeman in that State would at this time, or then, when that civil war was beginning, have lent a hand in any way to the rendition of a fugitive slave.  The Federal law requires the State to give up the fugitive, but the State law does not require judge, sheriff, magistrate, or policeman to engage in such work, and no judge, sheriff or magistrate will do so; consequently that Federal law is dead in Massachusetts, as it is also in every free-soil State,—­dead, except in as much as there was life in it to create ill blood as long as the North and South remained together, and would be life in it for the same effect if they should again be brought under the same flag.