383]           The Maryland Constitution of 1864.              37

Unionists, and the others on the opposite side. Mr. Golds-
borough was now State Comptroller, having been elected
at the previous fall election as we have seen. Fourteen
had been members of the Legislature of a few months
before, of whom Messrs. Stirling and Stockbridge, both
of Baltimore City, had been most active in preparing and
advocating the Convention Bill in the Senate and House
respectively, while Messrs. Clark, of Prince George's, and
Dent, of St. Mary's, had been leaders of the opposition to
it in the House of Delegates.

In fact, it is seldom that one reads the records of events
of the ten or fifteen preceding years without coming upon
the names of many of those who were members of the Con-
vention of 1864.

Taken as delegations, those from Baltimore City, Alle-
gany and Prince George's counties were perhaps the
stronger, though several others were of nearly the same
excellence. Many members who had been side by side in
the "Whig" and "Know Nothing" parties, or even the
"Union Party" days of 1860, were now ranged on opposite
sides, in this only showing the power of that mighty force
which had sundered the former political ties of so many
of the people of the state.² It should be said in addition,
that nearly all the leaders were of the legal profession.

From the outset, the majority took a stand as support-
ing the Union and the National Government, especially
in its policy as set forth in Mr. Lincoln's administration, and
their measures were planned with the intention of keeping
Maryland well in line with these ideas. These sixty-one
Union members were from the northern and western coun-
ties, Baltimore City, and Talbot, Caroline and Worcester
counties of the Eastern Shore, these latter three the south-
ern slave counties in which the cause of the Convention had

² For instance, Messrs. Chambers and Stirling were formerly
Whigs, Messrs. Smith (of Carroll) and Dennis had been candi-
dates on the Bell and Everett electoral ticket in 1860. Mr. Golds-
borough was formerly a Democrat.