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MARYLAND LINE CONFEDERATE
SOLDIERS' HOME.

THAT there was a division of sentiment in Maryland, upon the causes which
led to the war between the States, no one will deny; yet no intelligent
observer, or one at all familiar with the facts, will refuse to admit that the
large preponderance of public opinion was heartily in favor of the cause of the
South.

Maryland, by reason of her geographical location, close commercial interests
with the tobacco and cotton-raising States, similarity of institutions and intimate
social and natural relations with the people south of the Potomac, was emphatically
a Southern State. Of the same ancestry, prevailing customs and habits, and kept
closely welded by intermarriage, with the same views of the character of the
Federal Union, and the rights and privileges which were reserved to the States
under the Constitution of 1789, it would have been unnatural to have found her
people engaging in a fratricidal war of desolation and invasion of those communi-
ties, to which she was so bound by historic and sympathetic ties.

The conservatism of her people was pronounced, but the right of self-govern-
ment had, on this Continent, no firmer supporters and defenders than in Maryland.
It did not take long to make manifest the temper and intentions of her people; and,
therefore, by the strong arm of power, and by a most vigorous military despotism,
were her legislative bodies dissolved, her leading citizens jailed and sent to dun-
geons, and the condition of the State reduced to that of an alien principality held
by armed forces. The blow fell no less quickly than it did firmly; but still it did
not prevent the young men of the Commonwealth from forsaking the comforts of
their homes, and singly, or in small parties, crossing the Potomac and enlisting
in the armies of the Confederacy, to battle for the rights of their State, even though
she was manacled and helpless. Unable to speak for herself through the regularly
appointed methods, the sovereignty of Maryland found representation in the strong
arms of the fifteen thousand or more — the flower of her youth, who gave their
service to the South, and in the anxious hearts of those who remained at home, and
nightly sent up their blessings and prayers for the absent ones, while their daily
care was to mercifully assist the unfortunate who, in prison and hospital, were vis-
ited and ministered unto, as far as the sufferance of those in power would permit.

The devotion of the women of Maryland, and the insult and indignity to which
they were subjected in these merciful ministrations, are of the past; but no less will
the truth of history chronicle their deeds and the oppression under which her people