Maryland, adjoining Virginia to the north, had ever been loud in protestations of sympathy to the South. The State had all but seceded. It was alive with ardent Confederate well-wishers.
The song “Maryland, My Maryland,” vied with “Dixie” itself. From a thousand Baltimoreans and other Southern sympathizers Lee had received word that the moment his armies should set foot in Maryland the whole State would rise as one man to his support.
Lee, believing all this, decided to invade the North by way of Maryland, where aid and reënforcements by the wholesale presumably awaited him. Thence he planned to march straight to Pennsylvania, and so through to New York, and even, perhaps, to Boston itself.
Washington, too, might prove vulnerable to a flank attack.
In front of him, seeking to bar his way, lay the Army of the Potomac, sullen from many beatings, yet fearlessly awaiting a chance to check the invader. But Lee, having outwitted and outfought that same army so often in Virginia, had scant doubt he could do the same thing in Maryland.
He hoped to dodge the Army of the Potomac in his northward march, forcing it to follow him to some point where he could conveniently thrash it and drive it back, demoralized. In such an event the whole North would lie practically helpless and paralyzed before him, and there would be no troops to spare for a counter invasion of Virginia.
The plan was as simple as it was shrewd. And on September 5, 1862, Lee proceeded to put it into operation.
First bewildering his foes as to his exact position and projects, he safely crossed the Potomac with his whole army into that land of much promise, the State of Maryland.
Maryland had been noisy and voluble in loyalty to the South. But, now that the moment had come to prove that loyalty, the State failed to “rise as one man” to Lee’s support.
In fact, it failed ignominiously to rise at all.
Maryland, as a whole, received Lee coolly. There was no demonstration in his favor. The erstwhile ardent Marylanders did not care to go on record as favoring Lee. For should his invasion fail they were likely thus to find themselves in the unenviable position of the small boy who has prematurely gone to the help of the school bully’s victim.