“You have heard the order, and I must confess are in a pretty condition to obey it. I will have to return it with the endorsement upon the back that ‘the First Maryland refuses to meet the enemy, though ordered by General Jackson.’ Before this day I was proud to call myself a Marylander, but now, God knows, I would rather be known as anything else. Shame on you to bring this stigma upon the fair fame of your native State—to cause the finger of scorn to be pointed at those who confided to your keeping their most sacred trust—their honor and that of the glorious old State. Marylanders you call yourselves. Profane not that hallowed name again, for it is not yours. What Marylander ever before threw down his arms and deserted his colors in the presence of the enemy, and those arms, and those colors, too, placed in your hands by a woman? Never before has one single blot defaced her honored history. Could it be possible to conceive a crime more atrocious, an outrage more damnable? Go home and publish to the world your infamy. Boast of it when you meet your fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and sweethearts. Tell them it was you who, when brought face to face with the enemy, proved yourselves recreants, and acknowledged yourselves to be cowards. Tell them this, and see if you are not spurned from their presence like some loathsome leper, and despised, detested, nay, abhorred by those whose confidence you have so shamefully betrayed; you will wander over the face of the earth with the brand of ‘coward,’ ‘traitor,’ indelibly imprinted upon your foreheads, and in the end sink into a dishonored grave, unwept for, uncared for, leaving behind as a heritage to your posterity the scorn and contempt of every honest man and virtuous woman in the land.” The Colonel’s address, of which I have given the reader but a faint idea, was delivered with much feeling and listened to with close attention, and scarcely had he concluded when a wild yell broke the painful stillness that had prevailed, and a simultaneous rush was made for the ordnance wagon by those to whom he had just administered so scathing a rebuke. Never before, perhaps, had they seized their arms with such avidity, or buckled on their equipments with greater rapidity. “Now, sir,” they cried out, “lead us against the enemy, and we will prove to you that we are not cowards, and that neither have we forgotten these arms were placed in our hands by a woman.” “Forward!” was the command, and at the double-quick the regiment passed along the whole army amid the most deafening cheers. “We are going to have some work cut out now, boys, for the Marylanders are going to the front,” could be heard on all sides as we moved along, and every man inwardly determined that work _should_ be cut out if material could be found.