troops armed and clothed at least in part with articles stolen from the United States ; and the Federal flag while waving over the Federal offices was cut down by some person wearing the uniform of a Mai-yland soldier. To add to the foregoing, an assemblage elected in defiance of law, but claiming to be the legislative body of your Stitte, and so recognized by the Executive of Maryland, was debating the forms of abrogating the Federal compact. If all this be not rebellion, I know not what to call it. I certainly regard it as a sufficient legal cause for suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus.

" Besides, there %vere certain grounds of expediency on which I declined obeying your mandate.

" First, the writ of Habeas Corpus in the hands of an unfriendly power might depopulate this fortification and place it at the mercy of a ' Baltimore mob ' in much less time than it could be done by all the appliances of modern warfare.

"Second. The ferocious spirit exhibited by your community towards the United States Army would render me very averse from appearing publicly and unprotected in the city of Baltimore to defend the interests of the body to which I belong. A few days since a soldier of this command, while outside the walls, wasattacked by a fiend or fiends in human shape, almost deprived of life, and left unprotected about half a mile from garrison. He was found in this situation and brought in covered with blood.