Thomas Holliday Hicks

Hicks opposed abolitionists and supported slave owners. He denounced "[t]he attacks of fanatical and misguided persons against property in slaves" and added that slave owners had a right under the "[United States] Constitution to recover their property."[2] Hicks belatedly supported the Union of the states and sought to prevent Maryland from seceding and joining the Confederacy.[3] This would have isolated Washington, D.C., in Confederate territory.

Hicks reflected the divisions in his state. In Hicks' writings about the South and its secession, he referred to it as "we." He wrote that "they", the North (and Abraham Lincoln), were wrong in "refus[ing] to observe the plain requirements of the Constitution" to permit new states to join the Union as slave states.

After the bloodshed in Baltimore, involving Massachusetts troops which were fired on while marching between railroad stations, on April 19, 1861, Baltimore Mayor George William Brown, Marshal George P. Kane, and former Governor Enoch Louis Lowe requested that Hicks burn the railroad bridges leading to Baltimore, in order to prevent further troops from entering the state. Hicks reportedly approved this proposal. These actions were addressed in Ex parte Merryman, the famous case of Maryland militia Captain John Merryman who was arrested by Union forces.

After initially denying that he had authorized such actions, Hicks backtracked and voiced his support for the Union. But, writing to Lincoln on April 22, 1861, Hicks informed the new president that "I feel it my duty most respectfully to advise you that no more troops be ordered or allowed to pass through Maryland", requested that Lincoln obtain a truce with the South and suggested that Sir Richard Lyons mediate.[4] Hicks worried about Maryland's position as a border state. In an address to the Maryland General Assembly on April 25, 1861, he stated that "The only safety of Maryland lies in preserving a neutral position between our brethren of the North and of the South."[5]

Subsequently, many prominent men lobbied Hicks to call the General Assembly into special session, purportedly for the mixed reason of opposing secession and opposing the Northern attitude towards the South. The Assembly normally met in Annapolis, but that city was occupied by Union troops, so Hicks changed the location to Frederick, a generally pro-Union town. The Assembly convened in Frederick, and unanimously agreed that it did not have the power to commit the state to secession. On April 29, the Assembly voted 53–13 against calling a state convention which would have that power.