e as it
now presented itself. The governors of the first six of these were
already so much engaged in the secret intrigues of the secession
movement that they sent the Secretary of War contumacious and insulting
replies, and distinct refusals to the President's call for troops. The
governor of Delaware answered that there was no organized militia in his
State which he had legal authority to command, but that the officers of
organized volunteer regiments might at their own option offer their
services to the United States; while the governor of Maryland, in
complying with the requisition, stipulated that the regiments from his
State should not be required to serve outside its limits, except to
defend the District of Columbia.

A swift, almost bewildering rush of events, however, quickly compelled
most of them to take sides. Secession feeling was rampant in Baltimore;
and when the first armed and equipped Northern regiment, the
Massachusetts Sixth, passed through that city on the morning of April
19, on its way to Washington, the last four of its companies were
assailed by street mobs with missiles and firearms while marching from
one depot to the other; and in the running fight which ensued, four of
its soldiers were killed and about thirty wounded, while the mob
probably lost two or three times as many. This tragedy instantly threw
the whole city into a wild frenzy of insurrection. That same afternoon
an immense secession meeting in Monument Square listened to a torrent of
treasonable protest and denunciation, in which Governor Hicks himself
was made momentarily to join. The militia was called out, preparations
were made to arm the city, and that night the railroad bridges were
burned between Baltimore and the Pennsylvania line to prevent the
further transit of Union regiments. The revolutionary furor spread to
the country towns, and for a whole week the Union flag practically
disappeared from Maryland.

While these events were taking place to the north, equally threatening
incidents were occurring to the south of Washington. The State of
Virginia had been for many weeks balancing uneasily between loyalty and
secession. In the new revolutionary stress her weak remnant of
conditional Unionism gave way; and on April 17, two days after the
President's call, her State convention secretly passed a secession
ordinance, while Governor Letcher ordered a military seizure of the
United States navy-yard at Norfolk and the United