' (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.
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