Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis | Page 9

and had pledged himself to maintain that position before the people. The time soon came for him to redeem his pledge. On the morning of the 15th of April the President issued his proclamation calling a special session of Congress, which made an extra election necessary in Maryland. Before the sun of that day had gone down, this card was promulgated:
To the voters of the fourth congressional district of Maryland:
I hereby announce myself as a candidate for the House of Representatives of the 37th Congress of the United States of America, upon the basis of the unconditional maintenance of the Union.
Should my fellow-citizens of like views manifest their preference for a different candidate on that basis, it is not my purpose to embarrass them.
H. WINTER DAVIS. APRIL 15, 1861.
But dark days were coming for Baltimore. A mob, systematically organized in complicity with the rebels at Richmond and Harper's Ferry, seized and kept in subjection an unsuspecting and unarmed population from the 19th to the 24th of April. For six days murder and treason held joint sway; and at the conclusion of their tragedy of horrid barbarities they gave the farce of holding an election for members of the house of delegates.
To show the spirit that moved Mr. DAVIS under this ordeal, I cite from his letter, written on the 28th, to Hon. William H. Seward, the following:
"I have been trying to collect the persons appointed scattered by the storm, and to compel them to take their offices or to decline.
"I have sought men of undoubted courage and capacity for the places vacated.
"We must show the secessionists that we are not frightened, but are resolved to maintain the government in the exercise of all its functions in Maryland.
"We have organized a guard, who will accompany the officers and hold the public buildings against all the secessionists in Maryland.
"A great reaction has set in. If we now act promptly the day is ours and the State is safe."
These matters being adjusted, he immediately took the field for Congress on his platform against Mr. Henry May, conservative Union, and in the face of an opposition which few men have dared to encounter, he carried on, unremittingly from that time until the election on the 13th of June, the most brilliant campaign against open traitors, doubters, and dodgers, that unrivalled eloquence, courage, and activity could achieve. Everywhere, day and night, in sunshine and storm, in the market-houses, at the street corners, and in the public halls, his voice rang out clear, loud, and defiant for the "unconditional maintenance" of the Union. He was defeated, but he sanctified the name of unconditional union in the vocabulary of every true Marylander. He gathered but 6,000 votes out of 14,000, yet the result was a triumph which gave him the real fruits of victory; and he exclaimed to a friend, with laudable pride, "With six thousand of the workingmen of Baltimore on my side, won in such a contest, I defy them to take the State out of the Union." Though not elected, he never ceased his efforts. With us it was a struggle for homes, hearths, and lives. He said at Brooklyn:
"You see the conflagration from a distance; it blisters me at my side. You can survive the integrity of the nation; we in Maryland would live on the side of a gulf, perpetually tending to plunge into its depths. It is for us life and liberty; it is for you greatness, strength, and prosperity."
Nothing appalled him; nothing deterred him. He said, at Baltimore, in 1861:
"The War Department has been taught by the misfortune at Bull Run, which has broken no power nor any spirit, which bowed no State nor made any heart falter, which was felt as a humiliation that has brought forth wisdom."
He also said, speaking of the rebels, and foretelling his own fate, if they succeeded in Maryland:
"They have inaugurated an era of confiscations, proscriptions, and exiles. Read their acts of greedy confiscation, their law of proscriptions by the thousands. Behold the flying exiles from the unfriendly soil of Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri."
And so he worked on, never abating one jot of his uncompromising devotion to the Union, like a second Peter the Hermit, preaching a cause, as he believed, truly represented by insignia as sacred as the Cross, and for which no sacrifice, not even death, was too great.
But his crowning glory was his leadership of the emancipation movement. The rebels, notwithstanding "My Maryland's" bloody welcome at South Mountain and Antietam, claimed that she must belong to their confederacy because of the homogeneousness of her institutions. They contended that the fetters of slavery formed a chain that stretched across the Potomac, and held in bondage not only 87,000 slaves, but 600,000 white people also. Their constant theme was "the deliverance" of Maryland.