The effect of this communication upon Governor Hicks, I have never doubted, was to have him order the meeting of the legislature at Frederick, the other capital. I also believed that the protest about seizing the railroad was to get an excuse for making that change of place of meeting without giving the true reason. I am convinced that from the hour of my announcement of my purpose to so use the troops in keeping the peace, Maryland was as firmly a loyal State as any in the Union, so that I congratulated myself on the good effect of my announcement to the people of that State that the United States troops, and especially the troops of anti-slavery Massachusetts, had not come to Maryland to inaugurate a servile war or to promote negro insurrection.
Imagine, if you can, my surprise, but not my grief or consternation, at what followed at home. We had no telegraphic communication with the outer world, save at Perryville, where a member of the governor's staff, Major Ames, was stationed to forward me all communications by messenger from the governor, and to receive from me and transmit home such as were committed to him. Postal communication had been shut off. Major Ames had faithfully communicated all that had taken place, and Governor Andrew felt called upon to reprimand me for what I had done on the slave question, upon which our people were as sensitive one way as the people of the South were the other.
Will the reader appreciate my position? I was a life-long Democrat, and but lately the Breckenridge candidate for governor, and held, therefore, slavery as a constitutional institution. I was in command of Massachusetts troops, eight tenths of whom were antislavery men. I had been reprimanded by my governor for refusing to aid slaves in attempting to recover their freedom, and, worse than that, for offering the services of those troops to prevent a negro insurrection. Many of the people of Massachusetts had almost deified John Brown for his raid into Virginia.
Till May 6 no mail brought me information as to the manner in which the matter was received or understood. But after that I could imagine the platforms and the press denouncing what I had believed to be the most patriotic act of my life. Added to the labor of preparing my defence, was the fact that under the orders of General
