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194 the Two Leading Unionists in the City During the War Were Henry The two leading Unionists in the city during the war were Henry Stockbridge and Thomas Swann, and as the conflict wound down in 1864-1865 they came to represent the two diverging factions with the coalition party. Essentially, the two men parted ways over the basic orientation that Baltimore should take once the Confederacy had been defeated. Stockbridge was a New England-born attorney whose devotion to the Union cause, and his antipathy towards slavery and the whole Southern way of life made him eager to pull Baltimore and Maryland further away from the South and strengthen its ties with the Northern and Western states. Swann, on the other hand, believed that while the Southern slave system was a burden and should be eliminated, Baltimore's economic ties to the South were essential to its long-term growth and must quickly be re-cemented after the war. This was a very broad question and did not arise in any specific way until 1865, so on most of the other wartime issues that the coalition had to deal with, the Unionists were in general agreement. On the question of emancipation, both believed that not only should the slaves of the Confederacy be freed, but those in Maryland as well. They further agreed that Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore (the center of slave holding in the state) held undue power in the state and that Baltimore City should gain more than the token representation it held in the General Assembly. They also agreed that those Marylanders who had fought for the Confederacy should lose their political privileges if they chose to return to Maryland after the war. The high watermark of cooperation between the two leaders and their respective factions within the Unionist movement was their support for the new Maryland Constitution of 1864. While Stockbridge played the leading role in writing the document, Swann, supported the constitution and helped to get it passed in a hard fought referendum, positioning himself to run for governor on the Unionist ticket in 1864. The constitution emancipated Maryland’s enslaved people, stripped the old slave-holding areas of their special political privileges, and redistributed seats in the General Assembly to more accurately reflect the large populations in the central and western parts of the state. Baltimore's number of delegates rose from ten to eighteen and it received a third senator. The section of the constitution dealing with franchise was quite broad. It allowed election judges to bar from the polls any person who had fought for the Confederacy, but also those "who had given any aid, comfort, countenance, or support to those engaged in armed hostility."160 In spite of his private misgivings, Swann supported the whole constitution, and in return Stockbridge, Henry Winter Davis and the other so-called Radical Unionists backed his campaign for governor. Swann won the election in the fall of 1864, although under the new constitution he did not replace Governor Bradford until December, 1865. With the Stockbridge and Radical Unionists well entrenched in the city and operating virtually as a part of the Republican Party, and Swann, with his more conservative, some thought pro-Southern, views, headed for Annapolis, the future of the Unionist movement looked increasingly uncertain. The underlying tensions between the two wings of the Unionist movement grew stronger as the war drew to a close. When General Grant finally captured Richmond in April, 1865 Mayor 194 .
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