"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." [85]
A further subversion of the State government of Maryland was next made by a direct interference with the elections. An election was to be held in the State for members of the Legislature and members of Congress on November 3, 1863. The commanding General, on October 27th, issued an order to all marshals and military officers to cause their direct interference with the voters. The Governor (Bradford) applied to the President of the United States to have the order revoked, and protested against any person who offered to vote being put to any test not found in the laws of Maryland. President Lincoln declined to interfere with the order, except in one less important point. The Governor issued a proclamation on the day preceding the election, which the military commander endeavored to suppress, and issued an order charging that the tendency of the proclamation was to invite and suggest disturbance. One or more regiments of soldiers were sent out and distributed among several of the counties to attend the places of election, in defiance of the known laws of the State prohibiting their presence. Military officers and provost-marshals were ordered to arrest voters, guilty, in their opinion, of certain offenses, and to menace judges of election with the power of the army in case this order was not respected.
But, perhaps, the forcible language of the Governor to the
Legislature will furnish the most undeniable statement of the facts.
He says:
"On Monday evening preceding the election I issued a proclamation giving the judges of election the assurance of the protection of the State to the extent of its ability. Before the following morning, orders were sent to the Eastern Shore, directing its circulation to be suppressed; the public papers were forbidden to publish it, and an embargo laid on all steamers in port trading with that part of the State, lest they might carry it.
"The abuses commenced even before the opening of the polls. On the day preceding the election, the officer in command of the regiment which had been distributed among the counties of the Eastern Shore, and who had himself landed in Kent County, commenced his operations by arresting and sending across the bay some ten or more of the most estimable and distinguished of its citizens, including several of the most steadfast and most uncompromising loyalists of the Shore. The jail of the county was entered, the jailer seized, imprisoned, and afterward sent to Baltimore, and prisoners confined therein under indictment set at liberty. The commanding officer gave the first clew to the kind of disloyalty against which he considered himself as particularly commissioned, by printing and publishing a proclamation in which, referring to the election to take place on the next day, he invited all the truly loyal to avail themselves of that opportunity and establish their loyalty, 'by giving a full and ardent support to the whole Government ticket, upon the platform adopted by the Union League Convention,' declaring that 'none other is recognized by the Federal authorities as loyal or worthy of the support of any one who desires the peace and restoration of the Union.'
"This Government ticket was in several, if not all, of those counties designated by its color. It was a yellow ticket, and, armed with that, a voter could safely run the gantlet of the sabers and carbines that guarded the entrance to the polls, and known sympathizers with the rebellion were allowed to vote unquestioned if they would vote that ticket, while loyal and respected citizens, ready to take the oath, were turned back by the officer in charge without even allowing them to approach the polls. In one district the military officer took his stand at the polls before they were opened, declaring that none but the 'yellow ticket should be voted,' and excluded all others throughout the day. In another district a similar officer caused every ballot offered to be examined, and, unless it was the favored one, the voter was required to take the oath, and not otherwise. In another district, after one vote only had been given, the polls wore closed, the judges were all arrested and sent out of the county, and military occupation taken of the town. Other statements might be made.
"These abuses present a humiliating record, such as I had never supposed we should be called upon to read in any State, still less in a loyal one like this. Unless it be, indeed, a fallacy to suppose that any rights whatever remain to such a State, or that any line whatever marks the limit of Federal power, a bolder stride across that line that power never made, even in a rebel State, than it did in Maryland on the 3d of last November. A part of the army, which a generous people had supplied for a very different purpose, was on that day engaged in stifling the freedom of election in a faithful State, intimidating its sworn officers, violating the constitutional rights of its loyal citizens, and obstructing the usual channels of communication between them and their Executive."
The result was the election of a majority of members of the Legislature in favor of a State Constitutional Convention. The acts necessary for this object were passed. At the election of delegates, the military authority again interfered in order to secure a majority in favor of immediate and unconditional emancipation. The so-called Convention assembled and drafted a so-called Constitution, in which the twenty-third article of the Bill of Rights prohibited the existence of slavery in the State, and said, "All persons held to service or labor as slaves are hereby declared free."
It was urged, in objection to the adoption of the so-called Constitution by the Convention, that "the election by which the Convention was called and its members elected was not free for the legal voters of the State, but was held and conducted in clear violation of the rights of voters, in consequence of which a majority of the legal voters of the State were excluded from the polls." A rigid article on the qualifications of voters at the State elections was embodied in the Constitution, with the shameless provision that it should be in force at the election for ratification or rejection of the so-called Constitution which was to create the disabilities. The instrument also authorized a poll to be opened in each company of every Maryland regiment in the service of the United States at the quarters of the commanding officer, and that the commissioned officers of such company should act as the judges of election. The aid of the President of the United States was also obtained to help on the ratification of the new Constitution, and he concludes a letter on the subject by saying, "I shall be gratified exceedingly if the good people of the State shall, by their votes, ratify the new Constitution."
Notwithstanding the aid of the President, of the soldiers' votes, and a most stringent oath, and the exclusion of every person who had in any manner, by word or act, aided the cause of the Confederacy, the majority for the so-called Constitution was only 375. The total vote was 59,973. In 1860 the vote of the State was 92,502. Thus was the State government subjugated and made an instrument of destruction to the people; thus were their rights ruthlessly violated, and property millions of dollars in value annihilated.