But if those troops were forcibly resisted, he declared, “I will lay Baltimore in ashes.” When told that 75,000 Marylanders would resist the passage of Union troops, he promptly and decidedly “replied that he presumed there was room enough on her soil to bury 75,000 men.” As the delegation left, Lincoln remarked to one of its members: “You have heard of the Irishman who, when a fellow was cutting his throat with a blunt razor, complained that he haggled it. Now, if I can’t have troops directly through Maryland, and must have them all the way round by water, or marched across out-of-the-way territory, I shall be haggled.” Some fastidious members of this delegation thought Lincoln lacked dignity. The Rev. Dr. Richard Fuller, who was both a large-scale slave owner and a prominent Baptist leader, snorted that “nothing is to be hoped” from the president because he “is wholly inaccessible to Christian appeals—& his egotism will forever prevent his comprehending what patriotism means.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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