Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I.

[468] things has been permitted to continue for nearly a week; and our troops going to the capital have been delayed, and have had to find their way by irregular and circuitous routes, very much to their inconvenience. Citizens of the Free States have either been prevented altogether from visiting the capital or from returning thence to their homes, or have been compelled to run the gauntlet, been subjected to all sorts of insult and danger, and have had to resort to the most circuitous routes by private conveyance and at exorbitant expense. All facilities by mail and telegraph have been cut off by the same unlawful assemblage in Baltimore and other parts of Maryland, at a time when free communication is so much required between the Free States and Washington.

The public mind is already excited to the highest point that this state of things has been so long tolerated; and the people are determined that free and uninterrupted communication with the seat of Government shall be immediately established, not by circuitous routes, but by the direct lines of communication that they have heretofore traveled over. And it is demanded of the Government that they at once take measures to open and establish those lines of communication, and that they protect and preserve them from any further interruption. Unless this is done, the people will be compelled to take it into their own hands, let the consequences be what they may, and let them fall where they will. It is certainly desirable that this be done through the regularly constituted authorities at Washington; and the Government is earnestly desired to act without delay.

There is entire unanimity on the part of the people of the Free States to sustain the Government and maintain the Union.

I trust, Mr. President, that this letter will not be received unkindly; as, in writing it, I simply do what I feel it to be my duty as a citizen to do in this extraordinary state of things.

I have the honor to be, Sir, your most obedient servant,

George law.

Maryland, as we have seen, was practically, on the morning of the 20th of April, a member of the Southern Confederacy. Her Governor spoke and acted the bidding of a cabal of the ablest and most envenomed traitors. At their instance, he summoned the Legislature to meet in extra session at Annapolis on the 26th; while it was notorious that a majority of that body would probably vote her immediately out of the Union, and would, at best, proclaim her neutral in the struggle now opening — would forbid the passage of Federal troops across her soil; and not only forbid, but resist it. Baltimore was a Secession volcano in full eruption; while the counties south of that city were overwhelmingly in sympathy with the Slaveholders' Rebellion, and their few determined Unionists completely overawed and silenced. The counties near Baltimore, between that city and the Susquehanna, were actively cooperating with the Rebellion, or terrified into dumb submission to its behests. The great populous counties of Frederick, Washington, and Alleghany, composing Western Maryland--having few slaves — were preponderantly loyal; but they were overawed and paralyzed by the attitude of the rest of the State, and still more by the large force of rebel Virginians — said to be 5,000 strong — who had been suddenly pushed forward to Harper's Ferry, and who, though not in season to secure the arms and munitions there deposited, threatened Western Maryland from that commanding position. Thus, only the county of Cecil, in the extreme north-east, remained fully and openly loyal to the Union; that county lying this side of the Susquehanna, and being connected with the Free States by railroad and telegraph.

The Eighth Massachusetts, under Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, reached Perryville, on the east bank of the Susquehanna, on the 20th, and found its progress here arrested by burned bridges, and the want of cars on the other side. But Gen. Butler was not a man to be stopped by such impediments.