Maryland, Treason is made a little thing
throughout this State; nothing has been
deemed treason unless you deliberately go out
in open arms against your country to destroy
its defenders. Now I want to express my
opinion upon the floor of this house, that
there are many minor grades of acts which
constitute treason,
And I comparatively honor and esteem the
men who, believing that this constitution had
been violated by the northern States, honest-
ly believing that the right of revolution was
there and that the time to revolt bad come,
have openly and honestly taken their lives in
their bands, and gone gladly off to risk any-
thing for what they believe to be right, rather
than those men who have remained at home
and attempted to undermine and stab secretly
their government, who, not going out into
the field, not even going out into the com-
munity with clear voice and uplifted hand,
speaking or acting against the government,
but have, in their own secluded localities, or
in the coteries of their own friends, uttered
treason against the United States and have
incited others, bolder, braver, better men than
they are to do the deeds of arms which they
shrank from doing. That is not only treason,
but it is treason complicated with cowardice.
If I could have got a more stringent oath
than this, I would have bad one that would
go where this does not go, to the thoughts
and wishes of men. There is no one political
right under the constitution of the United
States or under the constitution and laws of
the State of Maryland, which inheres to any
single individual who desires the success of
the so-called southern confederacy. He has
by his own wish, by the operation of his
own heart, put himself beyond the pate of the
protection of those laws or those constitutions.
I hold him to be an outcast in the world,
without any country whatever. The south-
ern confederacy spews him out of her mouth,
because be has not gone and helped her in
her hour of trial. The State of Maryland will
have nought of him, except that fervent prayer
and wish that he may go beyond her BORDER=0s.
No land under the broad rule of almighty
God calls him its child. The southern con-
federacy cannot be called his country, for it
does not exist. Every time its flag has been
seen beyond the confines of its own domain,
it has been in reality the black flag, the death's
head and cross bones of the pirate, although
the red and the white of "the stars and the
bars" were painted over it as a thin disguise.
Into this question, and on the floor of this
house, has been dragged by the gentleman
from Prince George's (Mr. Marbury) a matter
which I bad hoped would never have been
spoken of in this house, without all the in-
dignation, all the deprecation, all the sorrow
that the English tongue could give, or the
energies of any man here could prompt him
to pour out before this body. He has dragged |
before this body the emaciated limbs, the
idiotic intellect of the starved and the dying,
aye, the dead, of our brave beroes in the pris-
ons of Richmond. He has dragged them
forth and mocked and jeered at their suffer-
ings, by saying that the government of the
United States have traded for political capital
upon the photographs taken of these men in
the hospitals in our State. He has thrown
the blame of these barbarities, the like of
which were never before heard of except in
the Black Hole of Calcutta, and even there
only dimly shadowed forth—he has thrown
the blame of these atrocities upon the gov-
ernment of the United States. He had not
one word of indignant protest in the sight of
God and man; 113 made not one single asser-
tion that any man with a heart for freedom,
or any love of humanity in his bosom, would
be expected to make, or who could ever be
supposed under any circumstances, or contin-
gencies, or conditions, to sympathize with,
desire the success of, do otherwise than hate
and contemn and scorn those who would
commit such atrocities.
Why, sir, it would be better to go forth
into the wild forests of Germany and lie down
with the unfed hungry bear, than to fall into
the hands of these civilized, Christian south-
ern chivalry. It would be better to make
one's bed in hell, for there the almighty God
could be with a man and sustain him, than to
fall into the hands of these high-toned gen-
tleman of the nineteenth century.
The gentleman from Charles (Mr. Edelen)
complains that we do not act consistently on
this question of the soldiers' vote. I know we
' could act consistently; we could do as Mr.
Jefferson Davis has done—refuse the votes of
these forty thousand men of Maryland, spoken
of here to-day, on the ground that we believe
them to be unsympathetic with the cause of
the government. That would be consistent ;
that would be carrying out the strict line of
justice to its full extent. But we have tem-
pered our justice with mercy. We have put
into this constitution an oath of such a char-
acter that if any man refuse to take it, he
ought never to vote in Maryland or even to
live. There is not one single provision in
that oath, given as it is to every voter in the
State of Maryland, which ought in the slight-
est degree to stir up the remotest particle of
repugnance in the breast of any loyal man.
1 shall find no difficulty in taking that oath.
It does not make me at all feel as if the iron
heel of the oppressor was on my neck, or as
if any instinct of freedom in my heart was
being crushed out. I would be willing to
swear that oath every time I voted, from now
until my lips grow cold in death, without
feeling that any single privilege of mine bad
been curtated.
It is to me a thing strange, and a thing in-
credible, that constituencies announced upon
this flour to be as loyal as any man upon the |
