break,
our bonds of affection.

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and
patriot grave to every living hearth and hearth-stone all over this
broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our
nature."

Words which, if human hearts do not harden into stone, through the long
ages yet to come,

"Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking off."

The appeal was spurned; and, in the face of its almost godlike
gentleness, they who already gloried in their anticipated saturnalia of
blood inhumanly and falsely stigmatized it as a declaration of war. The
long-patient North, slow to anger, in its agony still cried, "My
brother; oh, my brother!" It remained for that final, ineradicable
infamy of Sumter to arouse the nation to arms! At last, to murder at one
blow the hopes we had nursed so tenderly, they impiously dragged in the
dust the glorious symbol of our national life and majesty, heaping
dishonor upon it, and, like the sneering devil at the crucifixion,
crying out, "Come and deliver thyself!" and then no man, with the heart
of a man, who loved his country and feared his God, dared longer delay
to prepare for that great struggle which was destined to rock the earth.

Poor Maryland! cursed with slavery, doubly cursed with traitors! Mr.
DAVIS had said that Maryland was loyal to the United States, and had
pledged himself to maintain that position before the people. The time
soon came for him to redeem his pledge. On the morning of the 15th of
April the President issued his proclamation calling a special session of
Congress, which made an extra election necessary in Maryland. Before the
sun of that day had gone down, this card was promulgated:

_To the voters of the fourth congressional district of Maryland:_

I hereby announce myself as a candidate for the House of
Representatives of the 37th Congress of the United States of
America, upon the basis of the _unconditional maintenance of the
Union_.

Should my fellow-citizens of _like views_ manifest their preference
for a different candidate on _that basis_, it is not my purpose to
embarrass them.

H. WINTER DAVIS.
APRIL 15, 1861.

But dark days were coming for Baltimore. A mob, systematically