But it was not only in giving soldiers to the Confederacy that Baltimore was distinguished. Beyond all else it is memorable for the persecution to which those who sympathized with the South were subjected. In a letter written from Baltimore, and published in Quebec, there is a scathing account of the conduct of the Federal officers in your dear city. It was reproduced afterwards in Marginalia, which was published in Columbia in 1864. The writer of the letter says:
“The horrors practiced by the Lincoln Government upon the people of that beautiful and refined city, Baltimore, have earned for it the name of the Warsaw of America.
“Men alone are not the only victims of the accursed tyranny, but even ladies of rank are similarly situated, their crimes being receiving letters from absent husbands and fathers, or wearing red and white ribbons on dresses, or having given charity to the widow or orphan of some one who died in the Southern army. Against the men no charges are made, and the only warrant on which they are held is that their names are inscribed by Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Seward, upon a list in the hands of a convicted murderer and burglar.”
“The prime executioner and minister to the vengeance of Lincoln and Seward is of the most abhorrent stamp, and has inaugurated their reign of terror in Baltimore only as such a wretch could conceive it. This man is a pardoned convict, who, after receiving sentence of death for murder and burglary, and having been known to have committed six assassinations, was released from prison and made a jailer, but was dismissed for misconduct. The ruffian has daily interviews with the President, and returns from Washington with a fresh list of proscribed victims. Berret takes with him several escaped thieves, his former pals, and, accompanied by a file of soldiers, goes forth after midnight to do the bidding of the best and freest Government in the world, by breaking into the houses of their victims, dragging them from their beds, and thrusting them, handcuffed, into the cells of Fortress McHenry. Gen. Howard, an old gentleman, the candidate for Governor, and his son, Mr. F. Howard, were taken from their beds, and from the sides of their wives, between 1 and 2 o’clock in the morning, by Berret and a file of soldiers, who wounded with their bayonets Mr. F. Howard’s little son, six years old, and so ill-treated Mrs. Howard that she died on the Sunday following. Mr. Lincoln thought she was served too well, and declared that, the wives and brats of traitors deserved to be threaded upon red-hot jack chains. To the suffering children and wives of his victims he replies to their request to be permitted to see their parents with a refusal couched in obscene and brutal language, or with some filthy jest that could not be put upon paper. Berret, upon Seward’s order, broke into the mansion of a lady of rank, whose husband is in Europe, and, with his file of soldiers, pulled her from her bed, without permitting her to dress, or even putting on her shoes; the fellow forced her to go with him from the attic to the cellar in her night-gown, whilst he tore up the carpet, forced the doors and cut to pieces the beds, mattresses, brocaded chairs, sofas, &c., and turned out every trunk and drawer, leaving the beautiful residence a total wreck. No reason has been assigned for this outrage, except that his patron, the President, willed it. On the following night the house of a venerable gentleman was forcibly entered and every bed cut to pieces; his three daughters were pulled out of their beds and subjected to brutal indelicacies the heart sickens at. The following morning the colonel of these honorable and gallant defenders of their country, named Wilson, was taken into custody for various robberies, the property having been found in his shop in Brooklyn, New York.
“Mr. Faulkner, the late minister from the United States to France, has been imprisoned in a common felon’s cell, without even straw to lie upon, leaving his three motherless and unprotected daughters in a hotel, Mr. Lincoln refusing him permission to send a message to them, and [his guards] robbing him of all the money he had with him. Lincoln, when told of the grief of the young ladies, and that their dresses were wet with tears, ridiculed it and made filthy and obscene jokes at their expense. Mr. Wallis, president of the Senate, a man of refined mind, elegantly educated, who held his large fortune as a trust for every good and benevolent purpose, whose eloquence and high talent vied with his goodness and his virtues, has been consigned to a narrow cell with six other gentlemen, without the commonest convenience that the poorest beggar can command—torn from his wife and family while suffering from severe sickness, without a change of linen, and robbed of all his money.
“Mr. Ross Winans, nearly eighty years of age, was taken from his splendid mansion in the middle of the night, and for a second time consigned to a cell. This time his crime was giving food daily to twenty-five hundred poor people. His last release from prison cost him fifty thousand dollars in bribes. Mrs. Davis, a lady of large fortune, had fed nearly one thousand poor daily. Mr. Seward commanded her to desist from doing so; she refused, and published his command and her letter of refusal. The paper that published it has been suppressed, the materials of the office carried off and the editor imprisoned.”
Is not this enough? Well may your historian declare that the remembrance of “the insults, wrongs and outrages that were daily and hourly committed upon the people of this State,” still “rouses indignation too hot for the calmness of impartial history.” Without any bidding of mine you still remember the petty tyranny and devilish outrages of Schenck and Fish and Wallace. You remember, too, the cells of Fort McHenry. You remember the dungeons of Fort Lafayette and Fort Warren. You remember the insults to your wives and daughters. You remember the arrests, the midnight searches of your homes. Why should you forget it! There is nowhere in the obligations of present citizenship any obligation to consign to charitable oblivion the deeds which stain ineffaceably the reputation of those who committed them, and which stain still more darkly the reputation of those, in high authority, by whom the shame and sin were conceived and directed!
But the women of Baltimore had their revenge, and sweet, indeed, it was. The more they were harassed and harried by spies and informers, by sneaks in plain attire, and bullies with sash and sabre, the more ardent and indomitable were they in ministering to the needs of the Southern soldiers.
There was no break or pause. The women of Baltimore were untiring in relieving the wants of the Confederates who fell into the enemy’s hands, as they were indefatigable in sending through the lines the clothing and medicines of which our boys in the field were painfully in need. The Sultan of romance caused the tale or jest that refreshed his jaded sense to be written in letters of gold and placed in the archives of his kingdom. How shall be recorded fitly—save in the undying love and gratitude of generations of those who bless you, and hold you in honor ineffable—the deeds of those gentle shrinking women who, in our behoof, were indomitable, invincible. They were mother and sister to the sick soldier who was weary of breath. They were angels of benediction to those who were on the brink of the dark-flowing river. Fragile as flowers, and as beautiful in their holiness, they were so inspired, so exalted, that it appeared a bagatelle to them to risk fortune, health and life itself in solace of the bruised and bleeding Confederates.