attempt to exclude any one from voting for the anti-emancipation or for the secession candidates; and the governor does not venture to say that any such attempt was actually made.

So soon as this proclamation was known in Baltimore, the use which would be made of it to connect it with the arrests and to assail the integrity of the election was seen, and it was instantly disapproved by the general, Colonel Tevis ordered to be arrested, and the persons who were candidates were at once returned to Kent by steamer, on the night of the 3d of November, and they arrived early on the 4th, the day of election. Mr. Ricaud now sits in the State senate from that county. They were returned, after disclaiming any share in the prosecution of Gardner, but on parole to appear for further investigation.

The statement of outrages in Kent, on which the governor relies, is signed by four persons who are considered as avowed and notorious secessionists of the county, and by nobody else-E. Couch, W. H. Pennington, Philip Medlers, and S. Comegys-all defeated secession candidates at that election. To what consideration is their statement entitled? Besides it there is nothing impeaching the election in that county. No union man has furnished the governor with any statement of facts.

But what is conclusive of itelf, is that these defeated candidates do not say that any one legal voter, who would take the oath, was hindered from voting, nor that any one person was coerced to vote against his wishes, nor that any one was hindered from approaching the polls by any threat or violence of our soldiers, or by the fear of it. Their whole complaint is that the authority of the United States was present; and this, to disloyal men, was grievance enough to avoid the election.

On the other hand, the report of Colonel Tevis, a loyal gentlemen, is entitled to quite as much weight as the governor's surmises and insinuations, unsupported by facts, and to vastly more weight than any statement of defeated and angry

secessionists.

Colonel Tevis, in his official report, makes the following statements :

"Captain Frasier informed me that repeated threats had been made against his life, and that, unless some decided stand were taken by the military authorities, there would be serious disturbances at the polls. In consequence of this, I seized all the arms in the possession of suspected persons; private fowlingpieces were returned to their owners on the day succeeding the election, and some four boxes of United States muskets, many of them loaded, were sent to Baltimore. A number of cavalry sabres and revolvers were seized, later, by some of my officers, and are now in this camp awaiting your orders. From observation and report I am convinced it was the intention of the secesh and anti-government party to seize the polls and prevent the small minority of loyal men from voting; for the inhabitants of Kent county are, as a class, as truly disloyal as any of their friends actually in rebellion, and are only prevented by their isolated position, on the other side of the Chesapeake bay, from openly taking up arms against the Union."

After detailing the disposition of his force he proceeds:

The orders to these officers were 'to carry out department General Orders No. 53 to the letter, and to avoid all violence.' In accordance with these orders the oath therein prescribed was administered to every one whose loyalty was questioned; and on that oath being taken every one was allowed to vote. Not more than six in all refused, although some were deterred from coming to the polls by the knowledge of the fact that it would be required of them. There was no disturbance of any kind at any poll, and no complaint was made to me by any one of violence or of undue exercise of authority on the part of he military, except in cases of liquor sellers, all of whose establishment ere closed by orders till after the election."

"A letter signed A. P. Thruston, Captain, &c., from department headquarters, directed me to secure, when practicable, all copies of Governor Bradford's proclamation, which was I believe widely circulated, but I saw no copy of it myself until after my return to this place. Captain Pemberton, 3d Maryland cavalry, destroyed every copy which fell into his hands.

"At the polls at Massey's Cross-roads, a Lieutenant Colonel Massey, 2d regiment Home Guards, rendered himself extremely officious by his exertions in favor of the anti-administration ticket; I found him there on my arrival, in the judges room, where he seemed to preside."

After thus disposing of the flagrant charges, it is useless to consume time in showing the worthlessness of petulent and incoherent tattle, scrawled by insignificant but virulent enemies of the nation or mere partizans disappointed of office.

There does not appear to your committee the least reason to believe that a single person was hindered from voting by the military in the 1st congressional district, who had not been engaged in the rebel service or in aiding and abetting them, nor that the judges excluded any voter who proved his citizenship by confessing its obligations under oath.

The case of Isaac J. Davis, at the 1st election district in Worcester, falls in the first category; as also Joseph C. Bush, at Salisbury, who was willing enough to take the oath, but was notoriously giving aid and comfort to the enemy by carrying the mail to and from Virginia.

The previous elections in Maryland have been so grossly misrepresented, and yet have been so decisive and throw so much light upon the last, that we think we cannot more fitly close this part of our labors than by briefly recounting them since the rebellion.

At the special election of the 24th of April, 1861, in Baltimore, the secession candidates were not opposed and received about 9,000 votes.

On the 13th of June, following, a special election was held for Congress. The question was, war or peace, which meant union or disunion.

There were no military orders nor any military interference, and none were ever pretended.

There was no military force anywhere but in the 4th district in Baltimore city. The city was in the hands of Kane's police of the 19th of April memory; the secessionist police commissioners ruled the city, and they organized a special police of 1,900 men for the day of election, which with the 400 or 500 regular police about equalled the secessionist majority for May. The next election was that for governor in November, 1861. Bradford was the union candidate, Howard was the disunion candidate. The only issue was union or disunion. The orders above quoted were issued, but Governor Bradford does not think them wrong; and everybody knows there was no military force used to execute them-except in Worcester county on the Virginia line.

Bradford's vote was the largest vote ever cast in Maryland for any candidate. His majority was greatly the largest ever received in Maryland. The aggregate vote was not so large as that at the presidential election by about 8,900, but the falling off was in Baltimore, where the secessionists in part did not vote, Bradford receiving 17,922 votes and Howard receiving 3,347, making an aggregate of 20,269, instead of 29,063 cast for the three presidential candidates. On the great question of emancipation in Maryland, union men resolved to settle it without the aid of traitors or those who disavowed their allegiance to the United States. The anti-emancipationists, however, sought the aid of secessionists, and failed to get it except in one or two counties. Their votes, when cast at all, were cast for secessionist candidates, and not for the antiemancipation union candidates. It is singular that this fact should not have silenced the complaints of the defeated unionists.

The returns from the State show that a small vote was cast everywhere; in three of the districts there was no competing candidate for Congress, and of course the vote was small, for no one doubted the result between Goldsborough and Maffit, the emancipation and anti-emancipation candidates for comptroller. In the 5th district, however, there was a severe contest between an emancipationist, an anti-emancipationist, and a secessionist; the vote was pretty full, lacking less than a thousand of the vote in the animated contest of 1861, being about 8,000. The joint union vote was greater than the secession vote by 1,100. The secessionist had only 599 majority over the highest union candidate. The governor does not complain of the freedom of the election in that district being invaded.

In the first district there was also a contest, but it was between emancipation and anti-emancipation unionists. There was no secession candidate. The

election returns correspond with this state of facts. The union vote is fully out. The secession vote was not cast, except very partially, and for local county officers almost exclusively. They stood indifferent between the competing loyal candidates except in Cecil county. The returns show that the vote cast for the

two union candidates was rather above the union strength formerly developed in that district.

(It was in this county that the judges closed one of the chief polls, and so reduced the union vote.)

729

1,991

1,139

In Worcester county

Crisfield got in 1861.

He and Creswell got in 1863..

1,120

1,803

(In this county Creswell actually received 1,347 votes, many more than the whole Union vote in 1861.)

In this county there was a coalition between the anti-emancipationists and a a part of the secessionists, which swells the aggregate.

It has already been explained that in Somerset county about 800 secessionists voted for and elected all the county officers, but would not support Mr. Crisfield in his own county, and voted for nobody for Congress or comptroller. In the face of these facts. comment is useless, and misunderstanding impossible. It is

clear

1st. That the whole union vote was thrown for the two union candidates for Congress.

2d. There is not the least proof of any undue influence exerted between the union candidates and voters by the military authority.

3d. Except in one county the secessionists did not vote for Congress to any extent, but confined themselves to local candidates or abstained from voting at all. Your committee append to this report the proclamation of the governor of Maryland, of the third of November last, with documents thereto attached and marked F; and a copy of the proclamation of General Schenck, commander of the department, of the same date, (marked G,) accompanied by the letter of the

President of the day before. This they deem due alike to the subject and to the character of the parties concerned.

The contrast of the conduct of the governor of Delaware and of the governor of Maryland will fitly close this report.

The latter treated the order of General Schenck as an insult to the loyalty of Maryland, and an usurpation against her laws.

The former accepted the order as the best expression of the wishes of the loyal people, glad to receive aid in preserving the ballot-box from rebel votes ; and added at its foot his exhortation to the good people and officers of Delaware to aid in its enforcement, and stamped his approbation by affixing the seal of State.

The legislature of Delaware, at their session in March, 1863, under the control of a political party hostile to the principles on which the present administration came into power, and acting under the passions inspired by the report of a joint committee of the two houses to take proofs of the "interference" of the federal military officers in the election in that State of the preceding year, passed a very stringent and penal act for the punishment of such interference. We append a copy of this act, marked H. The committee, in their voluminous report, seem blind to the fact that a state of things existed in Delaware not less deplorable than that which prevailed in Kentucky, and evince the same bitter hostility to the national administration, its principles and policy-a hostility not surpassed in its style of denunciation even by the rebel journals published at Richmond. The following extract will be sufficient to characterize the whole document:

"Your committee might, perhaps, with propriety here close their report, submitting the facts elicited without further comment, to the general assembly and people of the State, as conclusive of a deliberate design and purpose on the part of the leading republican politicians of the State, and an unscrupulous and despotic administration at Washington to invade the sovereignty of Delaware, and trample under foot the most sacred right of her citizens. The great indig nity, however, offered to the State by the federal authorities in the invasion of her soil by federal soldiery for the purpose of influencing the result of an election, will justify the committee in expressing, in conclusion, their unqualified condemnation, both of the action of the federal administration and the traitorous conspirators among our own citizens, who, for partizan purposes alone, sought to defeat the fair expression of the popular will at the polls by the potent influence of federal bayonets.

"The relations of State and federal authority are too plainly defined by the written Constitution, that gives to the general government every power which it can rightfully exercise, and are too well understood by the people of the whole country to permit your committee, even in the exercise of the most liberal charity, to ascribe this great outrage to the ignorance and imbecility of the novices at Washington. Influenced by party considerations alone, the federal administration, disregarding the limitations upon federal power plainly written in the Constitution of the country, has been guilty before the whole country of invading one of the smallest States of the Union, not at the instance and request of the constituted authorities of the State, but at the solicitation of corrupt and unscrupulous neighborhood politicians. If this administration had done no previous wrongful act; if its history had been marked by a strict regard for constitutional obligations; if it had not unnecessarily plunged the whole country in ruinous civil war; if it had built no bastiles; deprived no man of his liberty; suspended no writs of habeas corpus; muzzled no presses, nor invaded the right of free thought and free speech, this single act of invading one of the feeblest States of the Union, for no other purpose than to determine the result of her local election, is, and ought to be, sufficient to brand it with infamy and everlasting