442 



MARTINSBURG. 



MARYLAND. 



money, victuals, or ammunition, or shall knowingly 

 harbor or protect an enemy, shall suffer death, or such 

 other punishment as shall be ordered by the sentence 

 of a court-martial. 



ART. 7. Whosoever shall be convicted of holding 

 correspondence with, or giving intelligence to, the 

 enemy, either directly or indirectly, shall suffer death, 

 or such other punistiment as shall be ordered by the 

 sentence of a court-martial. 



WM. M. CHURCHWELL, 



Colonel and Provost-Marshal. 



It must be apparent that the principles and 

 operation of martial law are wholly, and per- 

 haps necessarily, undefined. In each of the 

 preceding cases the extent of its operations has 

 been different. Other cases, not stated in de- 

 tail, present the same result. In all cases, the 

 commanders of the Federal forces issued their 

 proclamations upon the orders of the War De- 

 partment, which is under the immediate au- 

 thority of the President as Commander-in- 

 Ohief. 



MARTINSBURG, a thriving village hereto- 

 fore, is the capital of Berkley County, Vir- 

 ginia. It is located on the Tuscarora Creek 

 and on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 180 

 miles north of Richmond. Its situation is in an 

 elevated and fertile region a few miles west of 

 the Blue Ridge. The force of Gen. Patterson 

 which crossed the Potomac on the morning of 

 July 2d at Williamsport, after the skirmish at 

 Falling Water, moved to Hainesville, and thence 

 to Martinsburg on the 3d July. The nearest 

 force of the Confederates at the time was at 

 Big Springs, on the route to "Winchester, three 

 miles below. This was only a double picket- 

 guard. Gen. Johnston had moved forward the 

 heaviest part, of his column to Bunker Hill, a 

 small village ten miles below. Whilst this 

 point was in the possession of the Confederate 

 force, a great destruction of locomotives, cars, 

 and other property of the Baltimore and Ohio 

 Railroad Company was made. An eye-witness 

 thus describes the scene presented to his view : 



"On the 6th June we rode about three miles 

 along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. All 

 along were scattered coal-cars in long lines, 

 with the coal still burning, having been set on 

 fire by the Confederate force. They had kin- 

 dled huge fires around them, burning all the 

 wood-work, and a great deal of the iron. They 

 were all fine iron cars, holding about twenty 

 tons each. Here and there the road led above 

 them, and looking down, we could see the in- 

 side a mass of red-hot coals. Some small 

 bridges had been burnt with the cars on them, 

 and, giving way, the cars were left piled one on 

 another in the small streams below, all battered 

 and bent. We counted the line of locomotives 

 that had been burnt, (forty-one or forty-two in 

 all,) red and blistered with the heat. (See B. 

 & O. RAILROAD.) The withdrawal of troops 

 on the retreat of General Patterson again ex- 

 posed the inhabitants of this town to the power 

 of the Confederate force. 



MARYLAND, the most southern of the 

 Middle States, is bounded on the north by 



Pennsylvania, east by Delaware and the At- 

 lantic, and south, southwest, and west by Vir- 

 ginia, from which it is separated by the Po- 

 tomac River. The population in 1860, was 

 516,128 whites, 83,718 free colored, and 87,188 

 slaves ; total, 687,034. The ratio of increase 

 during the previous ten years was 23.49 white, 

 12.04 free colored, 3.52 slaves. The Governor 

 is elected for four years. The term of Gov- 

 ernor Hicks expired at the close of 1861. The 

 Senate consists of twenty-two members, who 

 are elected for four years, and the House of 

 seventy-four members, who are elected for two 

 years. (See NEW AMEKICAN CYCLOPAEDIA.) 



The location of Maryland on the highway 

 between the North and the South, and the po- 

 sition of the District of Columbia within her 

 territory, made her somewhat of a coveted prize 

 with the States determined to secede. By her 

 secession she would take possession of the Dis- 

 trict of Columbia, and Washington become the 

 capital of the Southern Confederacy. These con- 

 siderations caused unusual excitement among 

 her citizens as to the course which the State 

 should pursue. Perhaps the most weighty of 

 the material considerations which controlled as 

 well her action as that of Kentucky, arose from 

 her geographical position. 



A border State, adjoining a great slave State 

 on one side, and on the other a greater and far 

 more populous free State, which was one of 

 those Maryland had cause to censure as having 

 provoked, although it did not justify the ex- 

 treme violence of the South, and that was re- 

 strained by law and decency from open war- 

 fare upon slave property ; yet the moment she 

 joined and made common cause with others of 

 the South, then would commence the stampede 

 that in less than six months would cither not 

 leave a remnant of that peculiar property in 

 the State, or make the residue evil disposed 

 and of no value. 



The slave property in the state, at the com- 

 mencement of the difficulties of the country was 

 estimated at not less than fifty millions in value. 

 In addition, there would also have been the re- 

 moval of about one hundred thousand servile la- 

 borers from the cultivation of the soil, thereby 

 become desolate. This change of circumstances 

 in her condition would have made her a free 

 State, thereby destroying almost entirely her 

 particular interest for a union with the South- 

 ern States, and placing her on terms of disunion 

 and hostility with the free North, to which she 

 had thus become in a degree assimilated. 



The first decisive public act of the Governor 

 in favor of the Union, was his reply to A. H. 

 Handy, who had been appointed by the Legis- 

 lature of Mississippi, as a commissioner from 

 that State to Maryland. The occasion of this 

 visit of the Mississippi Commissioner, as stated 

 by himself, was " the crisis in the national af- 

 fairs of this country, and the danger which im- 

 perils the safety and rights of the Southern 

 States by reason of the election of a sectional 

 candidate to the office of President of the 



