l transport at the Federals' command, it would
be easy for them to land any number of troops in almost any part of the
western division, for the whole country is intersected by the creeks of
the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary rivers. One glance at the map will
show this more plainly than verbal description, and make it needless to
remark on the still more exposed and isolated position of the Eastern
Shore.

"In spite of all this, men say that if the opportunity were once more
given, the blade would be drawn in earnest, and the scabbard thrown
away. It may well be so; there has been oppression and provocation
enough of late to make the scale turn once and forever.

"Meantime, Maryland has not confined herself to a suppressed sympathy
with the South. We may guess, perhaps, but no one will ever know, the
extent of the covert assistance already rendered by this State to the
Confederacy. I am not referring to the constant reinforcements of her
best and bravest--over twelve thousand, it is said--that have never
ceased to feed the ranks of the Southern armies.

"One significant fact is worth mentioning, drawn from the reports of
Federal officers--viz., out of nine thousand Marylanders drafted into
the service, there are scarcely one hundred now remaining in the ranks;
they deserted, literally, by bands.

"I speak of supplies of all sorts, especially medicines, furnished
perpetually; of valuable information forwarded as to the enemy's
movements and intentions; of Confederate prisoners tended with every
care, and supplied with every comfort that womanly tenderness could
devise; of a hundred other marks of substantial friendship that could
not only be rendered by a nominal neutral, but a real ally. It would be
hard, indeed, if any miserable jealousies were to prevent all this from
being appreciated and rewarded some day.

"The Federal Government, at least, does ample justice to the
proclivities of Maryland. The system of coercion, hourly more and more
stringent, speaks for itself. The State is at this moment subjected to a
military despotism more irritating and oppressive than was ever
exercised by Austria in her Italian dependencies; more irritating,
because domestic interference and all sorts of petty annoyances are more
frequent here; more oppressive, because it is considered unnecessary to
indulge a political prisoner with even the mockery of a trial. Nothing
is too small for the gripe of the Provost Marshal's myrmidon