The Call for Troops was made, as we have seen, on the 15th day of April. On the evening of the following day several companies of a Pennsylvania Regiment reported for duty in Washington. On the 18th, more Pennsylvania Volunteers, including a company of Artillery, arrived there.
On the 19th of April, the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment—whose progress through New York city had been triumphal—was suddenly and unexpectedly assailed, in its passage through Baltimore, to the defense of the National Capital, by a howling mob of Maryland Secessionists—worked up to a pitch of States-rights frenzy by Confederate emissaries and influential Baltimore Secession-sympathizers, by news of the sudden evacuation of the Federal Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and other exciting tidings—and had to fight its way through, leaving three soldiers of that regiment dead, and a number wounded, behind it.
[At a meeting of the "National Volunteer Association," at Monument Square, Baltimore, the previous evening, says Greeley's History of the American Conflict, page 462, "None of the speakers directly advocated attacks on the Northern troops about to pass through the city; but each was open in his hostility to 'Coercion,' and ardently exhorted his hearers to organize, arm and drill, for the Conflict now inevitable. Carr (Wilson C. N. Carr) said: 'I do not care how many Federal troops are sent to Washington; they will soon find themselves surrounded by such an army from Virginia and Maryland, that escape to their homes will be impossible; and when the 75,000 who are intended to invade the South shall have polluted that soil with their touch, the South will extermininate and sweep them from the Earth.' (Frantic cheering and yelling). The meeting broke up with stentorian cheers for 'the South' and for 'President Davis."']
Ten companies of Philadelphia troops, reaching Baltimore at the same time, unarmed, were also violently assailed by the crazy mob, and, after a two hours' fight, reached the cars and returned to Philadelphia.
Washington City—already, by the Secession of Virginia, cut off from the South—was thus practically cut off from the North as well; and to isolate it more completely, the telegraph wires were cut down and the railroad bridges burned. A mere handful of regulars, the few volunteers that had got through before the outbreak in Baltimore, and a small number of Union residents and Government department clerks—these, under General Winfield Scott, constituted the paltry force that, for ten days after the Call for troops, held the National Capital.
Informed, as the Rebels must have been, by their swarming spies, of the weakness of the Federal metropolis, it seems absolutely marvelous that instant advantage was not taken of it.
The Richmond Examiner, of April 23d, said: "The capture of Washington City is perfectly within the power of Virginia and Maryland, if Virginia will only make the effort with her constituted authorities; nor is there a single moment to lose. * * * The fanatical yell for the immediate subjugation of the whole South is going up hourly from the united voices of all the North; and, for the purpose of making their work sure, they have determined to hold Washington City as the point whence to carry on their brutal warfare. Our people can take it—they will take it—and Scott, the arch-traitor, and Lincoln, the Beast, combined, cannot prevent it. The just indignation of an outraged and deeply injured people will teach the Illinois Ape to repeat his race and retrace his journey across the borders of the Free Negro States still more rapidly than he came. * * * Great cleansing and purification are needed and will be given to that festering sink of iniquity, that wallow of Lincoln and Scott—the desecrated city of Washington; and many indeed will be the carcasses of dogs and caitiff that will blacken the air upon the gallows before the great work is accomplished. So let it be!"
But despite all this fanfaronade of brutal bluster, and various movements that looked somewhat threatening, and this complete isolation for more than a week from the rest of the World, the city of Washington was not seized by the Rebels, after all.
This nervous condition of affairs, however, existed until the 25th—and to General Benjamin F. Butler is due the chief credit of putting an end to it. It seems he had reached the Susquehanna river at Perryville, with his Eighth Massachusetts Regiment on the 20th—the day after the Sixth Massachusetts had been mobbed at Baltimore—and, finding his further progress to Washington via Baltimore, barred by the destruction of the bridge across the Susquehanna, etc., he at once seized a large ferry steamer, embarked his men on her, steamed down the river and Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, took possession of the frigate Constitution, the Naval Academy, and the city itself, gathered supplies, and being reinforced by the arrival by water of the famous New York Seventh, and other regiments, repaired the branch railroad to Annapolis Junction (on the main line of railroad between Baltimore and Washington), and transferred his column from thence, by cars, on the 25th, to the National Capital—soon thereafter also taking military possession of Baltimore, which gave no further trouble to the Union Cause. In the meantime, however, other untoward events to that Cause had happened.
Two days after the Call for troops, the Virginia Convention (April 17th) secretly voted to Secede from the Union. An expedition of Virginia troops was almost at once started to capture the Federal Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, which, as has already been intimated, was evacuated hastily on the night of the 18th, by the handful of Union regulars garrisoning it, after a futile effort to destroy the public property and stores it held. Another expedition was started to seize the Federal Navy Yard at Norfolk—a rich prize, containing as it did, between 2,000 and 3,000 pieces of heavy ordnance (300 of them Dahlgrens), three old line-of-battle ships and a number of frigates, including the Cumberland and the fine forty-gun steam frigate Merrimac, together with thousands of kegs of powder and immense stores of other munitions of war, and supplies—that had cost in all some $10,000,000. Without an enemy in sight, however, this fine Navy Yard was shamefully evacuated, after partly scuttling and setting fire to the vessels—the Cumberland alone being towed away—and spiking the guns, and doing other not very material damage.