The Baltimore correspondent of the New York Tribune, it seems, has visited Fort McHenry, and thus reports what he saw there to
that paper:
I looked in upon Fort McHenry this morning, to pay my respects to Col Harvey Brown and the other officers, but found none of them in, except Lieuts. Reynolds and Smith. The old Fort is beginning to wear a war-looking aspect, under the auspices of the present efficient officer in command. The barracks are all in household order, and it will not be many days before the armament will be on a complete war footing. Some twenty-odd of the big guns have been mounted on new carriages, and they gape with their black mouths upon every quarter of the horizon. They are chiefly heavy howitzers, 24’s and 32’s, and some 10 and 13 inch mortars. Piles of black pills begin to rear their pyramidal heads on all sides, and the water battery will soon have its heavy ordnance mounted. A hundred men, now in garrison, are hard at work bringing order out of chaos, so that, let come what may, the stars and stripes will never cease to float from the staff, where it floated when Frank Key was inspired by its sight to indite the world-renowned song, chanting the praises of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Of the Republicans in Baltimore, the same correspondent writes:
I may note the fact, with some degree of gratification, that with the exception of some three or four out of the thousand Republicans who cast their votes for Lincoln and Hamlin in this city, there is not one of them who has forsaken the faith as written in the Chicago platform! There’s fidelity for you, all ye Republicans in the Free States—if there are any such—who have recanted their faith, and gone over to the compromisers, with Crittenden at their head. Nay, the Republican ranks in this city now number thrice as many as voted for Lincoln in November.
The Daily Exchange, Baltimore, MD