I have described the condition of Baltimore as it was early in May, 1861.  I reached that city just seven months later, and its condition was considerably altered.  There was no question then whether troops should pass through Baltimore, or by an awkward round through Annapolis, or not pass at all through Maryland.  General Dix, who had succeeded General Banks, was holding the city in his grip, and martial law prevailed.  In such times as those, it was bootless to inquire as to that promise that no troops should pass southward through Baltimore.  What have such assurances ever been worth in such days?  Baltimore was now a military depot in the hands of the Northern army, and General Dix was not a man to stand any trifling.  He did me the honor to take me to the top of Federal Hill, a suburb of the city, on which he had raised great earthworks and planted mighty cannons, and built tents and barracks for his soldiery, and to show me how instantaneously he could destroy the town from his exalted position.  “This hill was made for the very purpose,” said General Dix; and no doubt he thought so.  Generals, when they have fine positions and big guns and prostrate people lying under their thumbs, are inclined to think that God’s providence has specially ordained them and their points of vantage.  It is a good thing in the mind of a general so circumstanced that 200,000 men should be made subject to a dozen big guns.  I confess that to me, having had no military education, the matter appeared in a different light, and I could not work up my enthusiasm to a pitch which would have been suitable to the general’s courtesy.  That hill, on which many of the poor of Baltimore had lived, was desecrated in my eyes by those columbiads.  The neat earth-works were ugly, as looked upon by me; and though I regarded General Dix as energetic, and no doubt skillful in the work assigned to him, I could not sympathize with his exultation.

Previously to the days of secession Baltimore had been guarded by Fort McHenry, which lies on a spit of land running out into the bay just below the town.  Hither I went with General Dix, and he explained to me how the cannon had heretofore been pointed solely toward the sea; that, however, now was all changed, and the mouths of his bombs and great artillery were turned all the other way.  The commandant of the fort was with us, and other officers, and they all spoke of this martial tenure as a great blessing.  Hearing them, one could hardly fail to suppose that they had lived their forty, fifty, or sixty years of life in full reliance on the powers of a military despotism.  But not the less were they American republicans, who, twelve months since, would have dilated on the all-sufficiency of their republican institutions, and on the absence of any military restraint in their country, with that peculiar pride which characterizes the citizens of the States.  There are, however, some lessons which may be learned with singular rapidity!