The
governor of Delaware answered that there was no organized militia in his
State which he had legal authority to command, but that the officers of
organized volunteer regiments might at their own option offer their
services to the United States; while the governor of Maryland, in
complying with the requisition, stipulated that the regiments from his
State should not be required to serve outside its limits, except to
defend the District of Columbia.
A swift, almost bewildering rush of events, however, quickly compelled
most of them to take sides. Secession feeling was rampant in Baltimore;
and when the first armed and equipped Northern regiment, the
Massachusetts Sixth, passed through that city on the morning of April
19, on its way to Washington, the last four of its companies were
assailed by street mobs with missiles and firearms while marching from
one depot to the other; and in the running fight which ensued, four of
its soldiers were killed and about thirty wounded, while the mob
probably lost two or three times as many. This tragedy instantly threw
the whole city into a wild frenzy of insurrection. That same afternoon
an immense secession meeting in Monument Square listened to a torrent of
treasonable protest and denunciation, in which Governor Hicks himself
was made momentarily to join.
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