On Secret Service Read Online Free PDF Page B

confrontation. But it’s my duty to write and publish what I believe. Maryland must secede and join her Southern sisters. We are more Dixie than damn Yankee in this state.”
    Margaret took a last sip of the second-rate claret Fingal’s served. She never ordered more than one glass of wine and seldom drank more than half. “Do you really think Maryland can secede peacefully?” she asked.
    â€œThat is the position I’ve taken in the paper, that it can, and must.” As owner and chief editorialist of the Baltimore Independent , successor to another Independent in western Virginia where they’d lived before, Calhoun Miller defended his native state, South Carolina, and the entire South. He argued his case with a businessman’s practicality. The North and England needed Southern cotton. Northern industry needed Southern markets. Until the South’s peculiar labor system withered naturally, as he believed it would, it should be left alone, in deference to profits, and to the principle of states’ rights, the passion of the great John Calhoun for whom Miller’s parents had named him. In recent months, Margaret had seen her father move from that position of accommodation to a belief that Northern hostility was now too great, forcing the South to declare its independence. He didn’t go so far as the Richmond papers that called on Marylanders to seize the nation’s capital, but he promoted secession.
    Miller noted her empty plate. “May we go?”
    â€œOf course. You must be tired after another long day.”
    From a wall peg Miller retrieved his daughter’s cloak, a fashionable dark green burnous with vertical white stripes. She tied her small, round English porkpie hat under her chin; green flirtation ribbons trailed down behind. Margaret was a handsome, long-legged young woman, with an attractive full bosom. Her long dark hair was done up in a stylish bun netted in black velvet. Her outfit featured a smart fitted skirt; she thanked the Almighty for driving stiff, steel-hooped crinolines out of fashion. Because of her upbringing in the house of a journalist and her education at Mount Washington Female College, she was unusually sophisticated for her age.
    She linked arms with her father. On the way out Miller consulted his pocket watch. “Simms should be here. I told him seven sharp. Ah, there he is.” Their black houseman was bundled in a greatcoat on the driver’s seat of Miller’s splendid six-passenger rockaway. The roof extended forward above him but gave little protection from the spatters of snow. If he felt the damp and the chill, like a good servant he didn’t show it.
    â€œWe’ll go home, Simms,” Miller said as he helped Margaret in.
    â€œYes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Simms always took orders by thanking the giver. A freedman in his sixties, he wanted no truck with abolitionists. Margaret assumed the turmoil in the country baffled or frightened him; he never discussed it.
    Miller closed the door and drew a lap robe over them. A ship’s horn sounded distantly as they bumped down Pratt Street, leaving the harbor.
    â€œWas your brother home earlier?” he asked.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhere did he go?”
    â€œI’ve no idea. Cicero tells me nothing about his odd comings and goings. Surely he doesn’t have midnight meetings at the firm.” After graduation from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, Margaret’s older brother had decided to read law with a prominent local attorney. He’d spent four years at it, with little progress, and no apparent desire to hurry. Margaret had long ago given up trying to understand him, except in the most basic physical terms—his injury.
    â€œIf Donal returns when you’re in Washington, shall I tell him where to find you?”
    â€œI suppose you must.”
    â€œSuch rampant enthusiasm,” Miller said with a laugh.
    â€œDonal’s