GENERAL BANKS IN COMMAND. -- MARSHAL KANE ARRESTED. -- POLICE
COMMISSIONERS SUPERSEDED. -- RESOLUTIONS PASSED BY THE GENERAL
ASSEMBLY. -- POLICE COMMISSIONERS ARRESTED. -- MEMORIAL ADDRESSED
BY THE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL TO CONGRESS. -- GENERAL DIX IN
COMMAND. -- ARREST OF MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, THE MAYOR
AND OTHERS. -- RELEASE OF PRISONERS. -- COLONEL DIMICK.
On the 10th of June, 1861, Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks, of
Massachusetts, was appointed in the place of General Cadwallader to
the command of the Department of Annapolis, with headquarters at
Baltimore. On the 27th of June, General Banks arrested Marshal Kane
and confined him in Fort McHenry. He then issued a proclamation
announcing that he had superseded Marshal Kane and the commissioners
of police, and that he had appointed Colonel John R. Kenly, of the
First Regiment of Maryland Volunteers, provost marshal, with the aid
and assistance of the subordinate officers of the police department.
The police commissioners, including the mayor, offered no resistance,
but adopted and published a resolution declaring that, in the opinion
of the board, the forcible suspension of their functions suspended at
the same time the active operation of the police law and put the
officers and men off duty for the present, leaving them subject,
however, to the rules and regulations of the service as to their
personal conduct and deportment, and to the orders which the board
might see fit thereafter to issue, when the present illegal
suspension of their functions should be removed.
The Legislature of Maryland, at its adjourned session on the 22d of
June, passed a series of resolutions declaring that the
unconstitutional and arbitrary proceedings of the Federal Executive
had not been confined to the violation of the personal rights and
liberties of the citizens of Maryland, but had been so extended that
the property of no man was safe, the sanctity of no dwelling was
respected, and that the sacredness of private correspondence no longer
existed; that the Senate and House of Delegates of Maryland felt it
due to her dignity and independence that history should not record the
overthrow of public freedom for an instant within her borders, without
recording likewise the indignant expression of her resentment and
remonstrance, and they accordingly protested against the oppressive
and tyrannical assertion and exercise of military jurisdiction within
the limits of Maryland over the persons and property of her citizens
by the Government of the United States, and solemnly declared the same
to be subversive of the most sacred guarantees of the Constitution,
and in flagrant violation of the fundamental and most cherished
principles of American free government.
On the first of July, the police commissioners were arrested and
imprisoned by order of General Banks, on the ground, as he alleged in
a proclamation, that the commissioners had refused to obey his
decrees, or to recognize his appointees, and that they continued to
hold the police force for some purpose not known to the Government.
General Banks does not say what authority he had to make decrees, or
what the decrees were which the commissioners had refused to obey; and
as on the 27th of June he had imprisoned the marshal of police, and
had put a provost marshal in his place, retaining only the subordinate
officers of the police department, and had appointed instead of the
men another body of police, all under the control of the provost
marshal; and as the commissioners had no right to discharge the police
force established by a law of the State, and were left with no duties
in relation to the police which they could perform, it is very plain
that, whatever motive General Banks may have had for the arrest and
imprisonment of the commissioners, it is not stated in his
proclamation.
One of the commissioners, Charles D. Hinks, was soon released in
consequence of failing health.
On the day of the arrest of the police commissioners the city was
occupied by troops, who in large detachments, infantry and artillery,
took up positions in Monument Square, Exchange Place, at Camden-street
Station and other points, and they mounted guard and bivouacked in the
streets for more than a week.
On July 18th, the police commissioners presented to Congress a
memorial in which they protested very vigorously against their
unlawful arrest and imprisonment.
On the 23d day of July, 1861, the mayor and city council of Baltimore
addressed a memorial to the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States, in which, after describing the condition of affairs in
Baltimore, they respectfully, yet most earnestly, demanded, as matter
of right, that their city might be governed according to the
Constitution and laws of the United States and of the State of
Maryland, that the citizens might be secure in their persons, houses,
papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures; that
they should not be deprived of life, liberty or property without due
process of law; that the military should render obedience to the
civil authority; that the municipal laws should be respected, the
officers released from imprisonment and restored to the lawful
exercise of their functions, and that the police government
established by law should be no longer impeded by armed force to the
injury of peace and order. It is perhaps needless to add that the
memorial met with no favor.
On the 7th of August, 1861, the Legislature of the State, in a series
of resolutions, denounced these proceedings in all their parts,
pronouncing them, so far as they affected individuals, a gross and
unconstitutional abuse of power which nothing could palliate or
excuse, and, in their bearing upon the authority and constitutional
powers and privileges of the State herself, a revolutionary subversion
of the Federal compact.
The Legislature then adjourned, to meet on the 17th of September.
On the 24th of July, 1861, General Dix had been placed in command of
the Department, with his headquarters in Baltimore. On that day he
wrote from Fort McHenry to the Assistant Adjutant-General for
re-enforcement of the troops under his command. He said that there
ought to be ten thousand men at Baltimore and Annapolis, and that he
could not venture to respond for the quietude of the Department with a
smaller number. At Fort McHenry, as told by his biographer, he
exhibited to some ladies of secession proclivities an immense
columbiad, and informed them that it was pointed to Monument Square,
and if there was an uprising that this piece would be the first he
would fire. But the guns of Fort McHenry were not sufficient. He built
on the east of the city a very strong work, which he called Fort
Marshall, and he strengthened the earthwork on Federal Hill, in the
southern part, so that the city lay under the guns of three powerful
forts, with several smaller ones. Not satisfied with this, on the 15th
of September, 1862, General Dix, after he had been transferred to
another department, wrote to Major-General Halleck, then
Commander-in-Chief, advising that the ground on which the earthwork on
Federal Hill had been erected should be purchased at a cost of one
hundred thousand dollars, and that it should be permanently fortified
at an additional expense of $250,000. He was of opinion that although
the great body of the people were, as he described them, eminently
distinguished for their moral virtues, Baltimore had always contained
a mass of inflammable material, which would ignite on the slightest
provocation. He added that "Fort Federal Hill completely commanded the
city, and is capable, from its proximity to the principal business
quarters, of assailing any one without injury to the others. The hill
seems to have been placed there by Nature as a site for a permanent
citadel, and I beg to suggest whether a neglect to appropriate it to
its obvious design would not be an unpardonable dereliction of duty."
These views were perhaps extreme even for a major-general commanding
in Baltimore, especially as by this time the disorderly element which
infests all cities had gone over to the stronger side, and was engaged
in the pious work of persecuting rebels. General Halleck, even after
this solemn warning, left Federal Hill to the protection of its
earthwork.
The opinion which General Dix had of Baltimore extended, though in a
less degree, to a large portion of the State, and was shared, in part
at least, not only by the other military commanders, but by the
Government at Washington.
On the 11th of September, 1861, Simon Cameron, Secretary of War,
wrote the following letter to Major-General Banks, who was at this
time in command of a division in Maryland:
"WAR DEPARTMENT, _September 11, 1861_.
"_General._--The passage of any act of secession by the
Legislature of Maryland must be prevented. If necessary, all or
any part of the members must be arrested. Exercise your own
judgment as to the time and manner, but do the work effectively."
On the 12th of September, Major-General McClellan, Commander-in-Chief
of the Army of the Potomac, wrote a confidential letter to General
Banks reciting that "after full consultation with the President,
Secretary of State, War, etc., it has been decided to effect the
operation proposed for the 17th." The 17th was the day fixed for the
meeting of the General Assembly, and the operation to be performed was
the arrest of some thirty members of that body, and other persons
besides. Arrangements had been made to have a Government steamer at
Annapolis to receive the prisoners and convey them to their
destination. The plan was to be arranged with General Dix and Governor
Seward, and the letter closes with leaving this exceedingly important
affair to the tact and discretion of General Banks, and impressing on
him the absolute necessity of secrecy and success.
Accordingly, a number of the most prominent members of the
Legislature, myself, as mayor of Baltimore, and editors of newspapers,
and other citizens, were arrested at midnight. I was arrested at my
country home, near the Relay House on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,
by four policemen and a guard of soldiers. The soldiers were placed in
both front and rear of the house, while the police rapped violently on
the front door. I had gone to bed, but was still awake, for I had some
apprehension of danger. I immediately arose, and opening my bed-room
window, asked the intruders what they wanted. They replied that they
wanted Mayor Brown. I asked who wanted him, and they answered, the
Government of the United States. I then inquired for their warrant,
but they had none. After a short time spent in preparation I took
leave of my wife and children, and closely guarded, walked down the
high hill on which the house stands to the foot, where a carriage was
waiting for me. The soldiers went no farther, but I was driven in
charge of the police seven miles to Baltimore and through the city to
Fort McHenry, where to my surprise I found myself a fellow-prisoner in
a company of friends and well-known citizens. We were imprisoned for
one night in Fort McHenry, next in Fort Monroe for about two weeks,
next in Fort Lafayette for about six weeks, and finally in Fort
Warren. Henry May, member of Congress from Baltimore, was arrested at
the same time, but was soon released.
Col. Scharf, in his "History of Maryland," Volume III, says: "It was
originally intended that they (the prisoners) should be confined in
the fort at the Dry Tortugas, but as there was no fit steamer in
Hampton Roads to make the voyage, the programme was changed."[15]
[Footnote 15: See also the "Chronicles of Baltimore" by the same
author.]
The apprehension that the Legislature intended to pass an act of
secession, as intimated by Secretary Cameron, was, in view of the
position in which the State was placed, and the whole condition of
affairs, so absurd that it is difficult to believe that he seriously
entertained it. The blow was no doubt, however, intended to strike
with terror the opponents of the war, and was one of the effective
means resorted to by the Government to obtain, as it soon did, entire
control of the State.
As the events of the 19th of April had occurred nearly five months
previously, and I was endeavoring to perform my duties as mayor, in
obedience to law, without giving offense to either the civil or
military authorities of the Government, the only apparent reason for
my arrest grew out of a difficulty in regard to the payment of the
police appointed by General Banks. In July a law had been passed by
Congress appropriating one hundred thousand dollars for the purpose of
such payment, but it was plain that a similar expenditure would not
long be tolerated by Congress. In this emergency an intimation came to
me indirectly from Secretary Seward, through a common acquaintance,
that I was expected to pay the Government police out of the funds
appropriated by law for the city police. I replied that any such
payment would be illegal and was not within my power.
Soon afterwards I received the following letter from General Dix,
which I insert, together with the correspondence which followed:
"HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA,
"BALTIMORE, MD., _September 8, 1861_.
"TO HON. GEO. WM. BROWN, _Mayor of the City of Baltimore_.
"_Sir_:--Reasons of state, which I deem imperative, demand that
the payment of compensation to the members of the old city
police, who were, by a resolution of the Board of Police
Commissioners, dated the 27th of Jane last, declared 'off duty,'
and whose places were filled in pursuance of an order of
Major-General Banks of the same date, should cease. I therefore
direct, by virtue of the authority vested in me as commanding
officer of the military forces of the United States in Baltimore
and its vicinity, that no further payment be made to them.
"Independently of all other considerations, the continued
compensation of a body of men who have been suspended in their
functions by the order of the Government, is calculated to bring
its authority into disrespect; and the extraction from the
citizens of Baltimore by taxation, in a time of general
depression and embarrassment, of a sum amounting to several
hundred thousand dollars a year for the payment of nominal
officials who render it no service, cannot fail by creating
widespread dissatisfaction to disturb the quietude of the city,
which I am most anxious to preserve.
"I feel assured that the payment would have been voluntarily
discontinued by yourself, as a violation of the principle on
which all compensation is bestowed--as a remuneration for an
equivalent service actually performed--had you not considered
yourself bound by existing laws to make it.
"This order will relieve you from the embarrassment, and I do not
doubt that it will be complied with.
"I am, very respectfully,
"Your obedient servant,
"JOHN A. DIX,
"_Major-General Commanding_."
"MAYOR'S OFFICE, CITY HALL,
"BALTIMORE, _September 5, 1861_.
"Major-General JOHN A. DIX, _Baltimore, Md._
"_Sir_:--I was not in town yesterday, and did not receive until
this morning your letter of the 3d inst. ordering that no further
payment be made to the members of the city police.
"The payments have been made heretofore in pursuance of the laws
of the State, under the advice of the City Counsellor, by the
Register, the Comptroller and myself.
"Without entering into a discussion of the considerations which
you have deemed sufficient to justify this proceeding, I feel it
to be my duty to enter my protest against this interference, by
military authority, with the exercise of powers lawfully
committed by the State of Maryland to the officers of the city
corporation; but it is nevertheless not the intention of the city
authorities to offer resistance to the order which you have
issued, and I shall therefore give public notice to the officers
and men of the city police that no further payments may be
expected by them.
"There is an arrearage of pay of two weeks due to the force, and
the men have by the law and rules of the board been prevented
from engaging in any other business or occupation. Most of them
have families, who are entirely dependent for support on the pay
received.
"I do not understand your order as meaning to prohibit the
payment of this arrearage, and shall therefore proceed to make
it, unless prevented by your further order.
"I am, very respectfully,
"Your obedient servant,
"GEO. WM. BROWN,
"_Mayor of Baltimore_."
"HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA,
"BALTIMORE, MD., _September 9, 1861_.
"HON. GEO. WM. BROWN, _Mayor of the City of Baltimore_.
"_Sir_:--Your letter of the 5th inst. was duly received. I
cannot, without acquiescing in the violation of a principle,
assent to the payment of an arrearage to the members of the old
city police, as suggested in the closing paragraph of your
letter.
"It was the intention of my letter to prohibit any payment to
them subsequently to the day on which it was written.
"You will please, therefore, to consider this as the 'further
order' referred to by you.
"I am, very respectfully,
"Your obedient servant,
"JOHN A. DIX,
"_Major-General Commanding_."
"MAYOR'S OFFICE, CITY HALL,
"BALTIMORE, _September 11, 1861_.
"Major-General JOHN A. DIX, Baltimore.
"_Sir_:--I did not come to town yesterday until the afternoon,
and then ascertained that my letters had been sent out to my
country residence, where, on my return last evening, I found
yours of the 9th, in reply to mine of the 5th instant, awaiting
me. It had been left at the mayor's office yesterday morning.
"Before leaving the mayor's office, about three o'clock P. M. on
the 9th instant, and not having received any reply from you, I
had signed a check for the payment of arrears due the police, and
the money was on the same day drawn out of the bank and handed
over to the proper officers, and nearly the entire amount was by
them paid to the police force before the receipt of your letter.
"The suggestion in your letter as to the 'violation of a
principle' requires me to add that I recognize in the action of
the Government of the United States in the matter in question
nothing but the assertion of superior force.
"Out of regard to the great interests committed to my charge as
chief magistrate of the city, I have yielded to that force, and
do not feel it necessary to enter into any discussion of the
principles upon which the Government sees fit to exercise it.
"Very respectfully,
"Your obedient servant,
"GEO. WM. BROWN,
"_Mayor_."
The reasons which General Dix assigned for prohibiting me from paying
the arrearages due the police present a curious combination. First,
there were reasons of State; next, the respect due to the Government;
third, his concern for the taxpayers of Baltimore; fourth, the danger
to the quiet of the city which he apprehended might arise from the
payment; and, finally, there was a principle which he must protect
from violation, but what that principle was he did not state.
A striking commentary on these reasons was furnished on the 11th of
December, 1863, by a decision of the Court of Appeals of Maryland in
the case of the Mayor, etc., of Baltimore _vs._ Charles Howard and
others, reported in 20th Maryland Rep., p. 335. The question was
whether the interference by the Government of the United States with
the Board of Police and police force established by law in the city of
Baltimore was without authority of law and did in any manner affect or
impair the rights or invalidate the acts of the board. The court held
that, though the board was displaced by a force to which they yielded
and could not resist, their power and rights under their organization
were still preserved, and that they were amenable for any dereliction
of official duty, except in so far as they were excused by
uncontrollable events. And the court decided that Mr. Hinks, one of
the police commissioners, whose case was alone before the court, was
entitled to his salary, which had accrued after the board was so
displaced.
Subsequently, after the close of the war, the Legislature of the State
passed an act for the payment of all arrearages due to the men of the
police subsequent to their displacement by the Government of the
United States and until their discharge by the Government of the
State.
It will be perceived that General Dix delayed replying to my letter of
the 5th of September until the 9th; that his reply was not left at the
mayor's office until the tenth, and that in the meantime, on the
afternoon of the 9th, after waiting for his reply for four days, I
paid the arrears due the police, as I had good reason to suppose he
intended I should.
A friend of mine, a lawyer of Baltimore, and a pronounced Union man,
has, since then, informed me that General Dix showed him my letter of
the 5th before my arrest; that my friend asked him whether he had
replied to it, and the General replied he had not. My friend answered
that he thought a reply was due to me. From all this it does not seem
uncharitable to believe that the purpose of General Dix was to put me
in the false position of appearing to disobey his order and thus to
furnish an excuse for my imprisonment. This lasted until the 27th of
November, 1862, a short time after my term of office had expired, when
there was a sudden and unexpected release of all the State prisoners
in Fort Warren, where we were then confined.
On the 26th of November, 1862, Colonel Justin Dimick, commanding at
Fort Warren, received the following telegraphic order from the
Adjutant-General's Office, Washington: "The Secretary of War directs
that you release all the Maryland State prisoners, also any other
State prisoners that may be in your custody, and report to this
office."
In pursuance of this order, Colonel Dimick on the following day
released from Fort Warren the following State prisoners, without
imposing any condition upon them whatever: Severn Teackle Wallis,
Henry M. Warfield, William G. Harrison, T. Parkin Scott, ex-members of
the Maryland Legislature from Baltimore; George William Brown,
ex-Mayor of Baltimore; Charles Howard and William H. Gatchell,
ex-Police Commissioners; George P. Kane, ex-Marshal of Police; Frank
Key Howard, one of the editors of the Baltimore _Exchange_; Thomas W.
Hall, editor of the Baltimore _South_; Robert Hull, merchant, of
Baltimore; Dr. Charles Macgill, of Hagerstown; William H. Winder, of
Philadelphia; and B. L. Cutter, of Massachusetts.
General Wool, then in command in Baltimore, issued an order declaring
that thereafter no person should be arrested within the limits of the
Department except by his order, and in all such cases the charges
against the accused party were to be sworn to before a justice of the
peace.
As it was intimated that these gentlemen had entered into some
engagement as the condition of their release, Mr. Wallis, while in New
York on his return home, took occasion to address a letter on the
subject to the editor of the New York _World_, in which he said: "No
condition whatever was sought to be imposed, and none would have been
accepted, as the Secretary of War well knew. Speaking of my
fellow-prisoners from Maryland, I have a right to say that they
maintained to the last the principle which they asserted from the
first--namely, that, if charged with crime, they were entitled to be
charged, held and tried in due form of law and not otherwise; and
that, in the absence of lawful accusation and process, it was their
right to be discharged without terms or conditions of any sort, and
they would submit to none."
Many of our fellow-prisoners were from necessity not able to take this
stand. There were no charges against them, but there were imperative
duties which required their presence at home, and when the Government
at Washington adopted the policy of offering liberty to those who
would consent to take an oath of allegiance prepared for the occasion,
they had been compelled to accept it.
Before this, in December, 1861, the Government at Washington, on
application of friends, had granted me a parole for thirty days, that
I might attend to some important private business, and for that time I
stayed with kind relatives, under the terms of the parole, in Boston.
The following correspondence, which then took place, will show the
position which I maintained:
"BOSTON, _January 4, 1862_.
"MARSHAL KEYS, _Boston_.
"_Sir_:--I called twice to see you during this week, and in your
absence had an understanding with your deputy that I was to
surrender myself to you this morning, on the expiration of my
parole, in time to be conveyed to Fort Warren, and I have
accordingly done so.
"As you have not received any instructions from Washington in
regard to the course to be pursued with me, I shall consider
myself in your custody until you have had ample time to write to
Washington and obtain a reply.
"I desire it, however, to be expressly understood that no further
extension of my parole is asked for, or would be accepted at this
time.
"It is my right and my wish to return to Baltimore, to resume the
performance of my official and private duties.
Respectfully,
"GEO. WM. BROWN."
"DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
"WASHINGTON, _January 6, 1862_.
"JOHN S. KEYS, Esq., U. S. Marshal, _Boston_.
"_Sir_:--Your letter of the 4th inst., relative to George W.
Brown, has been received.
"In reply, I have to inform you that, if he desires it, you may
extend his parole to the period of thirty days. If not, you will
please recommit him to Fort Warren and report to this Department.
"I am, sir, very respectfully,
"Your obedient servant,
"F. W. SEWARD,
"_Acting Secretary of State_."
"BOSTON, _January 10, 1862_.
"MARSHAL KEYS, _Boston_.
"_Sir_:--In my note to you of the 4th inst. I stated that I did
not desire a renewal of my parole, but that it was my right and
wish to return to Baltimore, to resume the performance of my
private and official duties.
"My note was, in substance, as you informed me, forwarded to Hon.
W. H. Seward, Secretary of State, in a letter from you to him.
"In reply to your communication, F. W. Seward, Acting Secretary
of State, wrote to you under date of the 6th inst. that 'you may
extend the parole of George W. Brown if he desires it, but if
not, you are directed to recommit him to Fort Warren.'
"It was hardly necessary to give me the option of an extension of
parole which I had previously declined, but the offer renders it
proper for me to say that the parole was applied for by my
friends, to enable me to attend to important private business,
affecting the interests of others as well as myself; that the
necessities growing out of this particular matter of business no
longer exist, and that I cannot consistently with my ideas of
propriety, by accepting a renewal of the parole, place myself in
the position of seeming to acquiesce in a prolonged and illegal
banishment from my home and duties.
Respectfully,
"GEO. WM. BROWN."
On the 11th of January, 1862, I returned to Fort Warren, and on the
14th an offer was made to renew and extend my parole to ninety days
upon condition that I would not pass south of Hudson River. This offer
I declined. My term of office expired on the 12th of November, 1862,
and soon afterwards I was released, as I have just stated.
It is not my purpose to enter into an account of the trials and
hardships of prison-life in the crowded forts in which we were
successively confined under strict and sometimes very harsh military
rule, but it is due to the memory of the commander at Fort Warren,
Colonel Justin Dimick, that I should leave on record the warm feelings
of respect and friendship with which he was regarded by the prisoners
who knew him best, for the unvarying kindness and humanity with which
he performed the difficult and painful duties of his office. As far as
he was permitted to do so, he promoted the comfort and convenience of
all, and after the war was over and he had been advanced to the rank
of General, he came to Baltimore as the honored guest of one of his
former prisoners, and while there received the warm and hearty
greeting of others of his prisoners who still survived.