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The image of the horrible hairy Abolitionist gloating constantly over the thought of a massacre of Southerners by Negroes, which did duty for a portrait of Lincoln in the South, was not convincing to Marylanders, who knew the man himself and found him a kindly, shrewd, and humorous man of the world, with much in his person and character that recalled his Southern origin, who enforced the law with strict impartiality wherever his power extended, and who, above all, punctiliously returned any fugitive slaves that might seek refuge in the District of Columbia.
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.
I was just as certain, when I saw that fine, high-colored youth at the upper right-hand corner of our table, that there would appear some fitting feminine counterpart to him, as if I had been a clairvoyant, seeing it all beforehand. I have a fancy that those Marylanders are just about near enough to the sun to ripen well. How some of us fellows remember Joe and Harry, Baltimoreans, both!
They came almost entirely from the backwoods mountaineers of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, among whom the predominant faith had been Presbyterianism; but from the beginning they were occasionally visited by Baptist preachers, whose creed spread to the borders sooner than Methodism; and among the original settlers of Harrodsburg were some Catholic Marylanders.
He offered us some greenbacks, of which we accepted a dollar, asking him to try one of our Confederate dollars instead, which he declined to do, but expressed the hope, in a very delicate way, that all of the Confederate soldiers would so conduct themselves as to show the Marylanders of Union proclivities what gentlemen they really were.
General Lew Wallace, whose name became known in the years after the War through some noteworthy romances, Ben Hur and The Fair God, and who was in command of a division of troops stationed west of Washington, and composed in part of loyal Marylanders and in part of convalescents who were about to be returned to the front, fell back before Early's advance to Monocacy Creek.
Then he had a steadying word for the men of his company, and a hearty shout and a curse for some of the Georgians who had cut around the flanks of our main to come at their horses in the rear. But the lad's assertion that our time was come was only a half prophecy. The Marylanders, with the Virginians on either flank, stood firm, giving the onrushing wave a shock that went near to breaking it.
I knew this would allay suspicion and provide him help on the road; and, indeed, as Colonel Whittaker, who alone knew the secret, followed after the fleeing "Marylanders," he found that their advent had caused so little remark that the trail would have been lost had he not already known their destination.
Lord Delaware, Argall, and the Swede, Penn, Blackbeard, Paul Jones, Lord Rodney, a thousand heroes, had known it well; the pilots, like sea-gulls, had their nests there; the Marylanders had invaded it, the Tories had seized it, pirates had been suckled there; and now the courts and lawyers had forsaken it, to go inland to Georgetown.
The volley was followed by heavy firing, and Captain Lane, donning his hat, snatched his sword and ran down to the works, where the drum was beating, and the Marylanders were seizing muskets and falling into line. "What is it? whom have they attacked?" was the general query asked by all. The pickets were called in and the only sentries were the chain guards just outside the parapet.
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