Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/20

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CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY.

friends and neighbors. She lavished her last man and her last dollar to sustain that cause. No British soldier ever trod the soil of Maryland except during the short march from the head of Elk to Brandywine. She was never invaded, she was never molested; but she was true to her friends. There were no Tories in Maryland. A loyalist regiment was formed on the eastern shore, but its elements were so inefficient and incongruous that it was at once removed to Nova Scotia, where it perished from the memory of man and left hardly a trace behind.

Such were the men who moulded, formed and developed the society which was to face the crisis and do the duty of the times of 1859-65. It is our duty to tell how they did it.

In all discussions Maryland was on the side of the Union. She had given Colonel Washington, of Virginia, to the continental army as its commander-in chief, by and through her deputy in Congress in 1775, Thomas Johnson. She had made the first move for the Union in 1785. She had supported Washington all through the war and in the subsequent struggles and differences about the articles of Confederation, the Constitution and the Union. When, therefore, a party arose in the North which inculcated hatred toward the South, Maryland abhorred the apostles of malice and ill-will and sympathized more closely with the minority and weaker party. "Fatti Maschii, Parole Foemine" was the controlling sentiment of the men whose ancestors had stood with Stirling at Long Island until they were destroyed and the American army saved; whose charge at Eutaw had saved Greene's army; whose dash at Cowpens had driven the British line; whose bayonets at Guilford had broken the solid front of the Grenadier Guards—these men all believed in standing by their friends, reckless of risk, regardless of consequences. "With my friend—right or wrong—with my friend" is the complement of the State motto, "Courage and Chivalry."