HIGHLY IMPORTANT NEWS: Rapid Concentration of Troops at the National Capital; EXCITING REPORTS FROM BALTIMORE; Troops Coming Forward from All Points (4/22/1861)

New York Times archives – Times Machine ^ | 4/22/1861

[Homer_J_Simpson]

A gentleman who left Washington at half past four o'clock on Saturday morning, informs us that the general belief in that city in the best informed circles, was that JEFFERSON DAVIS was on his way North--at the head of a considerable force, which he was augmenting on the way. As all communication by telegraph with the South has been cut off, it was impossible to procure any positive information on this subject; but it was considered beyond dispute that he was en route for the Capital and not very far from it at the present time.

Our informant states that the railroad bridge at Canton, two or three miles out of Baltimore, on the road to Washington, was burning as he came through, and that the telegraph wires were also destroyed at that place. Baltimore, he states, seemed to be in a perfect whirlwind of excitement. Thousands of people thronged the streets, who appeared to have lost all control of themselves, and were more like fiends than human beings. At that time the military and police had not, apparently, established any authority over the city. At 1 o'clock our informant left Baltimore by a propeller through the Elkton Canal. He met two barges, which seemed to be filled with troops, though not many were visible, as they were all housed. The captains of the barges, on being hailed, denied that they had troops on board, but the gentlemen on the propeller were confident from what they heard that there were not less than 1,700, and that they were of the Pennsylvania Volunteers.

The road from Philadelphia to Baltimore is completely interrupted, no trains passing over it at all.

[jmacusa]

Slavery was not on the decline in the deep south but in the states to the north.

But the revisionist argument of slavery was on the way out'' fly's in the face of the simple fact of history you Rebs are either unable or unwilling to face. > The South went to war to preserve it. And expand it if it won.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "If the map went back to 1776, it would show an even better trend, because when the nation started, all of the states were slave states, and the movement was all in the direction of abolition."

Your map is inaccurate.
It should show, but does not, slavery in:

1. California (1790-1850)
2. New Mexico (1790-1860)
3. Utah (1860)
4. Oklahoma (1830-1860)
5. Kansas (1850-1860)
6. New Jersey (1850-1860)
7. Delaware (1860)

Regardless, it does at least show the expansion of slavery from the East Coast to more than a thousand miles west into Texas.
It should also show slavery in Oklahoma, New Mexico, California & Utah at some periods.
Further, as DiogenesLamp advocates, another SCOTUS Dred Scott-type ruling would make abolition "unconstitutional" in every state!

And then there were the hopes & plans of Southern adventurers known as "Filibusters" of the Golden Circle:

[jeffersondem]

“But the revisionist argument of slavery was on the way out’’ fly’s in the face of the simple fact of history . . .”

It doesn’t appear you fully understand the importance of the Florida Supreme Court’s 1860 ruling in Cato a Slave, vs. The State.

[jmacusa]

You don't seem to understand Dred Scott.

You don't seem to understand April 9, 1865.

[jeffersondem]

I guess right about now you would rather write about anything other than “Cato a Slave, vs. The State.”

Please explain - in your own words - what you were taught in school about that case?