The Soldiers' journal. (Rendezvous of Distribution, Va.) 1864-1865, 1864-07-06
For the Soldiers Journal.
A New State Born.

10.
territory which by Washington was called TIL
garden of America after it's horizon had boo,
darkened by the night of oppression and slavery
us sun md by the thick clouds of Ignorance if,
SOL polluted by the labor of slaves and its al,
TAINTED and infectious from being breathed by
the victims of that "sum of all villainies went
back from its place in the front rank of Ameri.
can states, back to the rear of the slowly dying
so-called republics of this Union, back to AL.
giers oppression and Algiers' barrenness Mary.
land, from an advance position among the States
OF the Union, sunk into condition which excit-
ed both pity and contempt.
win soil, surface and climate fitted only for
Tee LABOR ana the cultivation of spirit of free
dom, she had the corpse of human slavery bound
to her, and she went down, down, down. She
could not make slave labor even pecupia,i,v
profitable, and she drove free labor from her
borders. Between the North and the Soptb sbo
could lay claims to being with neither. and she
In vain essayed to follow in the wake of the
Cotton States. She made herself miserable
poverty stricken, and unworthy the respect of
nations, and she barely dragged on semi
existence.
Such was Maryland in 1861. AT that time the
danes of treason in the South like a conse
quence of nature, drew in that direction the RI
sing breeze of liberty, and as the clements be-
came more disturbed and broken the higher
winds of popular freedom, sweeping over Mary
land, drove the mists from her horizon. the
clouds from her sky, and at last the sun of free
dom shines fairly upon that fair land
In the Constitutional Convention held at An
napolis, Maryland, the following article in her
bill of rights passed on Friday, June Goth:
Thereafter in this State there shall be neither |
slavery nor involuntary servitude except in |
punishment for crime, whereof the party shall |
have been duly convicted and all persons held |
TO service or labor as slaves are hereby declared
Free"
How ought her advent among the free States
of the world be hailed? Henceforward she can
stand shoulder to shoulder with the free States
OF America, with Italy, Switzerland and Poland,
and battle for those rights which are sure in
time to come to all nations. Our country can
now count on Maryland as a friend. That State
can now advance in the way which Washington
expected, and which but for the hampering of
cursed slavery, she would have gone. Her rich
'oH can now be permitted to furnish food for
hundreds of thousands of people who will soon S
move to her inviting climate and scenery She
WILL hereafter be one of the producing States as
massachusetts, is the manufacturing State and
New York is the commercial State of the Union. | D.,
Inc land OF Lord Baltimore has again COM | |
nenced its onward march and the grand hymn | I
u She nations as they move onward and upward | t
VII hereafter have mingling with its notes the | r
CrohS tones of the newborn, yet giant State r
Maryland, my Maryland" O
for thee, fair Freedom, welcome all the past- ~
FOR thee, my country, welcome even the lastw r
w. Fl. III. BRAINERD. ,
Cterk Dese9ters' DivisiOn.
III