The news has been confirmed. It was a brickbat “Plug Ugly”
fight — the result of animal, and not intellectual or patriotic instincts.
Baltimore has better men for the strife than bar-room champions. The absence of
dignity in this assault will be productive of evil rather than good. Maryland
is probably lost — for her fetters will be riveted before the secession of Virginia
will be communicated by the senseless form of ratification a month hence. Woe,
woe to the politicians of Virginia who have wrought this delay! It is now
understood that the very day before the ordinance was passed, the members were
gravely splitting hairs over proposed amendments to the Federal Constitution!
Guns are being fired on Capitol Hill in commemoration of secession,
and the Confederate flag now floats unmolested from the summit of the capitol.
I think they had better save the powder, etc.
At night. We have a gay illumination. This too is wrong. We
had better save the candles.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 25
