A military genius

by Sarah Ellen Blackwell

Thomas A. Scott

CHAPTER III.

rise of the secession movement — the capital in danger — miss carroll's literary labors for the cause of the union — testimonials from eminent men.

"On the election of Mr. Lincoln, in 1860, the safety of the Union was felt to be in peril and its perpetuity to depend on the action of the border slave States, and, from her geographical position, especially on Maryland.

In the cotton States the Breckenridge party had conducted the canvass on the avowed position that the election of a sectional President—as they were pleased to characterize Mr. Lincoln—would be a virtual dissolution of the "compact of the Union;" whereupon it would become the duty of all the Southern States to assemble in "sovereign convention" for the purpose of considering the question of their separate independence.

In Maryland the Breckenridge electors assumed the same position, and as the Legislature was under the control of that party, it was understood that could it assemble they would at once provide for a convention for the purpose of formally withdrawing from the Union. The sessions, however, were biennial, and could only be convened by authority of the Governor. It therefore seemed for the time that the salvation of the Union was in the hands of Governor Hicks. Although he had opposed the election of Mr. Lincoln and all his sympathies were on the side of slavery, his strong point was devotion to the Union. With this conviction, founded upon long established friendship, Miss Carroll believed she might render some service to her country, and took her stand with him at once for the preservation of the Union, come weal or woe to the institution of slavery.

Governor Hicks had been elected some three years before as the candidate of the American party, and to the publications Miss Carroll had contributed to that canvass he largely attributed his election. It was therefore natural that when entering on the fierce struggle for the preservation of the Union, with the political and social powers of the State arrayed against him, that he should desire whatever aid it might be in her power to render him.

A few days after the Presidential election Miss Carroll wrote Governor Hicks upon the probable designs of the Southern leaders should the cotton States secede, and suggested the importance of not allowing a call for the Legislature to be made a question. That she might be in a position to make her services more effective, she repaired to Washington on the meeting of Congress in December, and soon understood that the Southern leaders regarded the dissolution of the Union as accomplished.

The leading disunionists from Maryland and Virginia were on the ground in consultation with the secession leaders in Congress, and the emissaries from the cotton States soon made their appearance, when it was resolved to make Maryland the base of their operations and bring her into the line of the seceding States before the power of the Democratic party had passed away, on the 4th of March, 1861.

Hence every agency that wickedness could invent was industriously manufacturing public opinion in Baltimore and all parts of the State to coerce Governor Hicks to convene the Legislature.