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1876.] OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES. 1501
day, Nov. 1st, and the various assaults then and there com-
mitted upon Reformers and negroes, in the very stronghold
of the police force. These known facts, or any of them,
should have been sufficient to have caused them to take all
possible extra and unusual precautions to protect every man
in the rights of a citizen.
Instead of that, it appears that the only danger they deemed
worthy of providing against was the one conjured up by Gen.
Herbert's third hand bugaboo legend of the invasion by the
Grand Army of the Republic, and the gallant General, with
an emphatic mental reservation, however, with his whole
battalion, undertook to protect the nurseries of the city from
that source of alarm. Not one special policeman was ap-
pointed; not one extraordinary precaution taken; and the
rule of rowdyism and riot, which existed on the afternoon of
the 1st, under the very eyes of the police headquarters,
spread like the plague and held high carnival on the mot-
row. They must have known the danger, and that they
alone could avert it; then why, since they failed to take
proper steps to do so, should they not be held responsible for
the calamity which followed?
And what, from the evidence before the House in all of
these cases, was the condition of the City of Baltimore on the
2nd of last November? Major Gilmor and Marshal Grey
swear that after ten o'clock the election was as quiet as elec-
tions usually are in Baltimore, except as to the 5th ward.—
Mr. Milroy, (one of the Board as then constituted, who has
since in part gained his deserts by losing his office), says
(p. 91, Mch. 16) that the election was as fair as the election
of 1856-7, which is perhaps nearer the truth ; but there are
a great number of witnesses who have been examined in
these election cases and investigatious, and, though we do
not propose to enter into any extended analysis of their vo-
luminous testimony, yet a few figures showing the number
of witnesses, who swear to facts coming within their own ob-
servation, will perhaps present with some degree of force the
great crime of the 2nd of last November, in Baltimore city.
And first it should be said that there is always a Hear
limit to the amount of evidence that can be obtained even on
matters of the greatest public or private interest; not only
on account of time and expense, but because men are not anx-
ious to be put in the position of prosecuting witnesses, and
will often prefer, generously or tamely, to be silent and suf-
fer an injury to be unknown or forgotten than to appear
against a wrong doer. And yet, notwithstanding this, and
the desultory manner in which the Written testimony was
taken during the brief time allowed, there are more than one
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