"
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 exterminate and sweep
them from the Earth.
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