estimate of the
political factors, would have given him Washington and much more, and
probably decided the war in favour of the Confederacy. He crossed the
Potomac and led his army into Maryland.

The stroke was as much political as military in its character. Maryland
was a Southern State. There was a sort of traditional sisterhood between
her and Virginia. Though she had not seceded, it was thought that her
sympathies must be with the South. The attack on the Union troops in
Baltimore at the beginning of the war had seemed strong confirmation of
this belief. The general impression in the South, which the Southern
general probably shared, was that Maryland was at heart Secessionist,
and that a true expression of her will was prevented only by force. The
natural inference was that when a victorious Southern commander appeared
within her borders, the people would rally to him as one man, Washington
would be cut off from the North, the President captured, the Confederacy
recognized by the European Powers, and the North would hardly continue
the hopeless struggle. This idea was embodied in a fierce war-song which
had recently become popular throughout the Confederate States and was
caught up by Lee's soldiers on their historic march. It began--

"The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland! My Maryland!"

And it ended--

"She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb!
Hurrah! She spurns the Yankee scum!
She breathes! She lives! She'll come! she'll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!"

But Maryland did not come. The whole political conception which underlay
Lee's move was false. It may seem curious that those who, when
everything seemed to be in favour of the North, had stoned Union
soldiers in the streets of the State capital, should not have moved a
finger when a great Southern soldier came among them with the glamour of
victory around him and proclaimed himself their liberator. Yet so it
proved. The probable explanation is that, Maryland lying under the
shadow of the capital, which was built for the most part on her
territory, Lincoln could deal with her people directly. And wherever he
could get men face to face and show the manner of man he was, he could
persuade. Maryland was familiar with "the despot" and did not find his
"heel" at all intolerable. 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 o