Maryland Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks issued a proclamation calling for four volunteer regiments of infantry to serve three months in state defense or for the protection of Washington, D.C.—a critical moment just weeks after Fort Sumter's fall. But the real drama was Hicks's public letter addressing explosive accusations from Baltimore's Mayor George William Brown, who had implicated the governor in the destruction of railroad bridges near Baltimore on May 19th. Hicks forcefully denied involvement, blaming instead George P. Kane and Enoch L. Lowe for conspiring against the government and for their suspicious nighttime visit to his bedroom demanding his consent to "the perpetration of an unlawful act." The governor promised a full refutation once the pressure on his time subsided. Meanwhile, Congress nominated Henry May for the Fourth District seat, and reports from General Butler's camp at the Relay House detailed a soldier's mysterious illness—initially suspected as strychnine poisoning—which doctors ultimately attributed to exposure, lack of sleep, and overindulgence in rich food.

This page captures Maryland in its most precarious moment: caught between North and South, hovering on the edge of secession while the Civil War was barely a month old. The bridge destruction mentioned was the April 19th incident where Maryland militia and citizens had burned railroad bridges to prevent Union troop movements—a moment that nearly pushed the state into the Confederacy. Governor Hicks's careful diplomacy, calling for volunteers while claiming he never supported the bridge sabotage, shows how desperately Maryland's leadership tried to thread an impossible needle: supporting the Union while managing a divided, volatile population. The presence of General Butler at the Relay House and concerns about poisoning troops reveal the raw paranoia and danger surrounding Federal forces in what was essentially hostile territory.

• Governor Hicks claims his enemies George P. Kane and Enoch L. Lowe arrived at his bedroom 'at a late hour of the night' to pressure him into approving an 'unlawful act'—a startling detail suggesting assassination-plot-level intrigue at the highest levels of Maryland government during the war's opening weeks.
• The Secretary of War explicitly guaranteed that Maryland's four regiments would serve 'within the limits of the State of Maryland, or for the defence of the Capital of the United States, and not to serve beyond the limits aforesaid'—showing how fragile voluntary enlistment was in a border state, requiring ironclad promises to prevent panic.
• Dr. Bradford's report diagnoses the soldier's 'poisoning' case by interviewing him and discovering he was 'unaccustomed to exposure' and 'in the habit of occasionally indulging excessively in the use of intoxicating liquors, and at such times will lay down in any position, however much exposed'—a candid 19th-century medical description of an enlisted man's drinking habits.
• Henry May's acceptance letter explicitly states he cannot 'become the candidate or representative of a party' and must remain free 'for the sake of our country—its peace, its preservation and its union'—language from a Maryland politician desperately seeking middle ground while the nation fractured around him.
• An advertisement for the Mount Vernon Company on Charles Street was manufacturing 'SLTING FOR PAPER MAKERS' and duck fabric for trunks, showing that Baltimore's manufacturing sector continued normal business even as militia burned bridges and generals occupied the city.

• George P. Kane, named as one of Hicks's conspirators in this May 15 paper, was Baltimore's police commissioner and would become notorious for his Confederate sympathies—he eventually fled to the South and served in the Confederate Army, making the governor's accusation historically prescient.
• General Butler, who permitted Dr. Bradford to inspect the sick soldier's camp, was Benjamin "Beast" Butler—the same Union general whose harsh occupation policies would make him the most hated man in the South by war's end, yet in May 1861 he was still cooperating with Maryland civilian authorities in investigating poisoning cases.
• Henry May, nominated in this edition, represented the vanishing breed of true Union Conditional Loyalists—men who opposed the Republican Party viciously but couldn't stomach secession; he would eventually be arrested and imprisoned by Union authorities for his Confederate sympathies, despite his professed loyalty here.
• The mention of Lord John Russell's statements about protecting British commerce during the American blockade shows how quickly the Civil War went global—London's money market was already 'depressed by the American news' by early May 1861, just 20 days after Fort Sumter.
• The railroad bridges mentioned as destroyed on 'the 19th ultimo' (April 19) were sabotaged to prevent troop movements—an act that would become legendary in Maryland lore, yet this contemporary May 15 account shows the governor already scrambling to deny responsibility, revealing how politically toxic the incident had become in just three weeks.