512 
 
Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
BETWEEN 
 
 S. TEACKLE WALLIS, ESQ. 
 
 \ 
 OF BALTIMORE, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 HON. JOHN SHERMAN, 
 
 OF THE U. S. SENATE, 
 CONCERNING THE ARREST OF MEMBERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Maryland Legislature, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 MAYOR AND POLICE COMMISSIONERS 
 
 OF BALTIMORE, IN 1861. 
 
01. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 S. TEACKLE WALLIS, Esq., 
 
 Hon. JOHN SHERMAN, 
 
 OF THE TJ. S. SE1STA.TE, 
 
 Concerning the Arrest of Members of the Maryland 
 Legislature, and the Mayor and Police Com 
 missioners of Baltimore, in 1861, 
 

v/3 
 
 MR. WALLIS TO ME. SHERMAN. 
 
 BALTIMORE, December 12, 1862. 
 Hon. John Sherman, United States Senate: 
 
 SIR : In the report of proceedings of the Senate on the 9th instant, 
 in the debate on the resolution of Senator Saulsbury, my attention has 
 been called to the following paragraph : 
 
 "He (Mr. Sherman, of Ohio) believed, however, that the President 
 had power to make arrests without the forms of law. In the case of Dr. 
 Bachelder and the members of the Maryland Legislature, who were about to 
 carry their State out of the Union, he thought the President was justified 
 in making the arrests." 
 
 I was a member of the Maryland Legislature in 1861, and was arrested 
 at midnight, at my dwelling, in the city of Baltimore, about the middle of 
 September, in that year, from which time until the 27th of November, 
 1862, I was confined in one or other of the fortresses of the United State s 
 which have been appropriated by Mr. Lincoln to the uses of State prisons. 
 [ have never, at any time, been informed of the grounds upon which 
 I was arrested, and I know positively nothing whatever in regard to them, 
 at this moment, except what I have seen stated, from time to time, in the 
 newspapers. 
 
 The commission, consisting of Messrs. Dix and Pierrepoint, which was 
 created by the Secretary of War for the examination of the cases of pris 
 oners arrested and confined like myself, held a session at Fort Warren in 
 May, 1862, but I was not vouchsafed any communication as to the charges 
 against me, or any opportunity of being heard in my own defence, although 
 the War Department had been officially notified some time before by Colo 
 nel Dimick, upon the report of my physician, that my health was seri 
 ously affected by my confinement. The commissioners, in fact, took no 
 notice whatever of my existence. Counsel I was not permitted to employ, 
 for as early as the 28th of November, 1861, the United States Marshal at 
 Boston officially visited Fort Warren for the purpose of communicating to 
 my fellow-prisoners and myself an order from Mr. Seward, the Secretary 
 of State, announcing that no one would be recognized by his department 
 (which then had charge of us) as attorney of any State prisoner, and that 
 the employment of counsel by any of us would be regarded by him as a suf- 
 Jicient reason for the prolongation of our imprisonment. On the 27th of 
 November ultimo, as I have said, I was released from Fort Warren, with 
 out conditions or explanations of any sort. The authority for my discharge 
 as, I suppose, the authority for my arrest was a telegram. Under 
 these circumstances I am sure you will recognize it as no more than rea 
 sonable, that I should take some interest in not being misrepresented, after 
 having been for so long arbitrarily and cruelly dealt with in my person. 
 
 While I was a prisoner at Fort Warren, I saw, by accident, in the Daily 
 Congressional Globe, a speech delivered in the House of Representatives 
 
on the llth of March, 1862, by the Hon. John Hickman, of Pennsylva 
 nia, in which he stated, upon the authority, as he said, of the President of 
 the United States, that "Mr. Lincoln had thought it advisable to incarce 
 rate the Maryland Legislature to prevent them from enacting an ordinance 
 of secession, and carrying the State out of the Union." " The President 
 thought," as Mr. Hickman further said, " that legislators were about to 
 meet at Frederick with resolutions of secession in their pockets, and that, 
 if left unmolested, it was not unlikely a resolution of secession might actu 
 ally be passed by the Legislature of Maryland. lie, therefore, as a matter 
 of extreme caution, thought it better to arrest the members of the Legislature 
 and put them in jail" 
 
 My companions and myself were, of course, debarred by our situation, 
 when this speech appeared, from all opportunity of joining issue with Mr. 
 Lincoln upon the truth of the fact which it was thus stated that he had as 
 sumed as a sufficient reason not only for suppressing, by force, the Legis 
 lature of a State of the Union, but for inflicting upon us, personally, the 
 wrong of unlawful imprisonment, and indignities and indecencies which it 
 would cause you shame and disgust for me to describe. What Mr. Hick- 
 inan stated to have been merely an apprehension of the President s a thing 
 he deemed not unlikely " you are now reported to have asserted as a 
 matter of fact. I see, by the report for yesterday s proceedings, that one 
 of your brother Senators Mr. Fessenden appears to have repeated the 
 same charge, in almost the identical language employed by you, and is 
 represented as not only asserting his own belief in its truth, but as having 
 added that the President had, no doubt, evidence which led him to the 
 same belief." 
 
 Such statements, publicly made by prominent Senators, in their places, 
 in open debate, would entitle the fact asserted to be hereafter assumed as 
 true, if none of the parties interested, who are now at liberty and who 
 know it to be untrue, were to give it public contradiction. The duty 
 of doing this devolves upon myself, at least as imperatively as upon any 
 other member of the Legislature referred to. because I was Chairman of 
 the Committee on Federal Relations in the House of Delegates, and the 
 matter in question, as I will take leave to show you, was brought partic 
 ularly within the scope of my official knowledge and action in that capacity. 
 I can readily understand how you and others may have been misled by the 
 falsehoods which were so widely circulated through the press in regard to 
 my colleagues and myself, while our voices were silenced by force, and I 
 cheerfully assume that, as a Senator or a gentleman, you would not have 
 made the statement of which I complain, unless you had believed it to be 
 well founded. I trust I may equally assume that you will have pleasure 
 in the opportunity of repairing the injustice which you have done us, in 
 giving it circulation upon your authority. 
 
 The special session of the Legislature of Maryland, called by Governor 
 Hicks in 1861, was opened in Frederick on the 26th of April in that year. 
 On the next day, April 27, a select committee of the Senate reported to 
 that body an address to the people of Maryland, which on the same day 
 was unanimously adopted, and was shortly afterwards published, with the 
 individual signatures of the Senators, in. all the newspapers of the State. 
 
 The principal feature of that address, in fact almost the only purpose of 
 its promulgation, is developed in the following extract : 
 
 " We cannot but know that a large portion of the citizens of Maryland 
 
have been induced to believe that there is a probability that our delibera 
 tions may result in the passage of some measure committing this State to 
 secession. It is, therefore, our duty to declare that all such fears are with 
 out just foundation. We know that we have no constitutional authority 
 to take such action. You need not fear that there is a possibility that we 
 will do so. 
 
 "If believed by us to be desired by you, we may, by legislation to that 
 effect, give you the opportunity of deciding for yourselves your own future 
 destiny. We may go thus far, but certainly will go no further." 
 
 You will find the whole address on pages 8 and 9 of the printed journal 
 of the Senate, which is no doubt accessible to you in the library of Con 
 gress. It could not be more clear than it is upon the point in dispute. 
 On the 29th day of April, the day after the address was communicated to 
 the House of Delegates by the Senate, an opportunity was afforded for the 
 House to announce its own conclusions, in the most direct and unequivocal 
 manner, upon the constitutional authority of the Legislature to alter the 
 federal relations of the State. On page 19 of the printed journal of the 
 House of Delegates you will find that, on the day last named, a memorial 
 was presented "from 216 voters of Prince George s county, praying the 
 Legislature (if in its judgment it possesses the power) to pass an ordinance 
 of secession without delay." 
 
 This memorial was at once referred to the Committee on Federal Rela 
 tions. Desirous of putting the question at rest, as it was then greatly agi 
 tating the public mind, the committee determined to report upon it before 
 the adjournment. There was no difference of opinion among the members 
 of the committee as to reporting unfavourably to the prayer of the memo 
 rialists, nor, with five out of seven, was there any doubt as to the propri 
 ety of stating, explicitly, as the ground of our recommendation, that the 
 measure proposed was unconstitutional. Two reports were accordingly 
 made. You will find them both on page 21 of the House journal. That 
 of the majority, which I myself signed and presented, as chairman of the 
 committee, contains the declaration, in words, " that in their judgment 
 the Legislature does not possess the power to pass such an ordinance as ix 
 prayed, and that the prayer of the memorialists cannot, therefore, be grant 
 ed." The minority report asks leave simply "to report unfavorably to 
 the prayer of -the memorialists." 
 
 With the concurrence of the whole committee, I stated to the House the 
 difference of opinion which had caused two reports to be made, and the 
 importance of having the deliberate sense of the House, on the question, 
 announced to the people at once. The grounds upon which it was believ 
 ed to be beyond the constitutional authority of the Legislature to pass an 
 ordinance of secession were then briefly stated, and a test vote thereupon 
 was taken, by common understanding, on the minority report, which re 
 ceived only thirteen votes to fifty-three. The majority report was then 
 adopted without a division. From that time, down to the forcible sup 
 pression of the Legislature by Mr. Lincoln s orders, the subject was never 
 again mooted, but was considered, on all hands, as absolutely and perma 
 nently disposed of. Without pretending to know what was in the breast 
 of every member, I know enough to assert, in the most unhesitating man 
 ner, my belief that at the time of our arrest, no individual, of either 
 House, had a thought of again recurring to it. I positively know that if 
 such recurrence had been attempted, it would not have been, for a moment, 
 
entertained in the House of which I was a member. From all that I 
 knew then, and know now, of the purposes of the members of the Legis 
 lature and their opinions and I think, I was not and am not ill-informed 
 I have no doubt that if they had been permitted to hold the session 
 which was prevented by the arrests of September, 1861, they would have 
 adjourned, in three days, for lack of business to occupy them. 
 
 Not only have I given you the facts truly in regard to the supposed in 
 tention of the members of the Legislature to pass a secession ordinance 
 themselves, and their actual determination to the contrary, but if you will 
 take the trouble to examine the journals (Senate journal, 133, 134, and 
 House journal, 108, 121,) you will further see that as early as May 14, 
 1861, the House of Delegates, by a vote of forty-five to twelve, and the 
 Senate unanimously, had adopted a resolution against the expediency of 
 even calling a sovereign convention of the people of the State. The rea 
 sons assigned for that action, in the report which accompanied it, you will 
 find to have been even more conclusive, when the Legislature was suppres 
 sed, than when the resolution was adopted. 
 
 All these facts are well known to be true by every member of the Legis 
 lature, no matter what may be his political sentiments. They were equally 
 well known, at the time of our arrest, to every man in Maryland who had 
 troubled himself to follow the course of our legislative proceedings. They 
 were perfectly accessible to Mr. Lincoln at the time when, if Mr. Hick- 
 man truly represents him, "he thought it better to arrest the members of 
 the Legislature and put them in jail," merely because he thought it " not 
 unlikely" the facts were otherwise. If what I have stated is not true, its 
 untruth can be shown. If, as Mr. Fessenden suggests, the President has 
 " evidence " upon which his alleged belief to the contrary can be justified, 
 such " evidence" can be easily produced. I assert to you that there is no 
 such evidence, and that there can be none, because the fact which it is sup 
 posed to establish did not exist. I am willing to stake my veracity and in 
 tegrity upon the issue, and I challenge the public production of any proof 
 to the contrary of what I have asserted. Doing so, I leave it to your can 
 dor and sense of right, to give to gentlemen whom you have been instru 
 mental in injuring, an opportunity of being heard in their own vindication, 
 through you, in the same public way in which the injury has been done. 
 You will permit me to add, in frankness, that in what I have said I am 
 not to be, for a moment, understood as conceding that Mr. Lincoln would 
 have had the shadow of lawful right to break up the Legislature of Mary 
 land and imprison its members, at his pleasure, "without the forms of 
 law," even if the charge which I have repelled had been as well founded 
 as it is the contrary. Upon that question, however, I have no right to 
 take advantage of the present communication to obtrude my opinions upon 
 you. Nor will you, I trust, suppose for it is equally due to frankness 
 that I should not allow you to suppose that I have intended to apologize 
 for or excuse any of the views which the Legislature of Maryland, in the 
 exercise of its constitutional and rightful functions, saw fit to adopt and 
 promulgate, at the session referred to, concerning the sectional struggle 
 which has since assumed so fierce an aspect and such gigantic proportions. 
 Those views may, of course, be erroneous for legislatures are not more 
 infallible than congresses or presidents but they were entertained and 
 proclaimed in good faith, upon mature consideration, concerning questions 
 which deeply interested us and our people, and on which we had a right, 
 
and were bound, as individuals and legislators, under the free institutions 
 of the country, to form and express our opinions without let or hindrance, 
 or fear of president, commander-in-chief, or any other functionary or citi 
 zen. 
 
 I have said that those opinions may be erroneous, but I believe them to 
 be otherwise. I believe now, as I believed when they were adopted, that 
 they were just and wise and patriotic, and I am proud that my humble 
 name was connected with their assertion. I am none the less proud of it 
 because the experience of the bloody and disastrous season which has in 
 tervened has confirmed their justice, or because there are tens of thousands 
 now, throughout the country, who are beginning to concur in them, for 
 one who was even disposed to deal fairly with them, at the excited moment 
 when they were uttered. How far the expression of these views may have 
 been the real cause of the arrests, for which the suspected intention to pass 
 an ordinance of secession is the cause publicly assigned, it would not be 
 proper for me here to discuss my only purpose having been to show that 
 such intention is and has always been falsely ascribed to the Legislature of 
 Maryland, and that if our arrest was really made upon that ground, it wag 
 as wanton as it was cruel and unlawful. 
 
 Let the cause have been what it may, however, I have good reasons for 
 believing that the seizure of the members of the Maryland Legislature was 
 not made by Mr. Lincoln s direction or authority at all. I am justified in 
 thinking you will find abundant "evidence," upon proper and sufficient 
 investigation, that the whole high-handed proceeding was the work of Mr. 
 Seward, of his own mere motion, without the previous knowledge or con 
 sent of the President, in any shape. That Mr. Lincoln was, afterwards, 
 induced to ratify it, of course, makes his responsibility the same as if he 
 had been its author, but I am speaking only of the facts as I am confident 
 you will find that they existed when the arrests were made. What were 
 the purposes and motives of Mr Seward, you can ascertain more readily 
 than I. My only knowledge on the subject is derived from an official des 
 patch of Lord Lyons to Lord Russell, bearing date November 4, 1861, and 
 published in the Parliamentary Blue Book. I found it in the New York 
 Times, of March 1, 1862. His lordship reports in it the substance of an 
 interview which he had had, a day or two before, with the Secretary of 
 State. "Mr. Seward replied," he says ". . that as to the recent ar 
 rests, they had almost all been made in view of the Maryland elections" I 
 have no comment to make, here, upon such a disclosure. 
 Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 S. T. WALLIS. 
 
REPLY OF MR. SHERMAN. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 5 December 26, 1862. 
 Hem. S. Teackle Wallis: 
 
 SIR : Your letter of the 12th of December has been received. 
 
 If I was convinced by it that it was not the purpose of the Maryland 
 Legislature of which you was a member, to avail itself of the first safe and 
 practicable opportunity to join the Confederates in rebellion against the 
 United States, I would cheerfully correct what I said in the Senate of you 
 and your colleagues. As a student of the common law, I have been 
 taught to regard the right of personal liberty as the most sacred privilege 
 of a freeman, never to be affected except for crime, or in the case provided 
 by the Constitution, when the public safety is jeoparded by rebellion or 
 invasion. If your imprisonment was not, in my opinion, within this rule, 
 I certainly would not justify your arrest. 
 
 The language attributed to me in your quotation is not accurately re 
 ported. I said in the debate referred to : 
 
 " So in the case of the Maryland Legislature, where the President be 
 lieved that certain gentlemen were conspiring to overthrow the Govern- 
 ment, not probably by open force, but by the exercise of their power as 
 members of the Legislature, I believe the President would have been 
 wanting in his duty to his country if he had not arrested these men, and 
 detained them at least until he defeated their disloyal and treasonable 
 purposes." 
 
 Your elaborate letter no where contains any denial of the treasonable 
 and disloyal purposes " of the Legislature ; nor is there any denial that 
 they were conspiring the overthrow of the Government by the exercise of 
 their power as members of the Legislature ; nor could I fail to be im 
 pressed with the entire absence of any avowal of loyal obedience to the 
 Government on your part. Your letter confines the vindication of the 
 Legislature to a citation of their proceedings to show that both Houses had 
 early in the session voted their opinion that they had no power to pass an 
 ordinance of secession, and that on the 14th of May they had voted it inex 
 pedient to call a sovereign convention. You add your asseveration to the 
 truth of these facts, sufficiently proved by the record, and as I understood 
 your letter, you pledge your personal veracity that there was no intention 
 to pass such an ordinance. 
 
 This defence, it is apparent, is merely a technical denial of one form of 
 arraying the State of Maryland against the United States ; but it is sim 
 ply the assertions of the accused party even on that point, which a few 
 moments in altered circumstances could reverse : and, unfortunately, the 
 evidence of their purpose, on the first favorable occasion, to defy the 
 United States and resist its authority, is in the possession of the public, 
 and therefore, probably of the Government, corroborated by the avowed 
 
purposes of some of its members just on the eve of their election your 
 own among them. 
 
 I cannot state the facts affecting individual cases, and shall fortify the 
 opinion expressed by me in the Senate by events happening since the com 
 mencement of the rebellion, leaving to the proper authorities the task of 
 designating individuals affected by them. 
 
 On the 19th of April, 1861, when the blood of United States soldiers, 
 shed in your streets without provocation, was still warm, a meeting was 
 held in Monument square, under the auspices of the Mayor, in which your 
 participation is thus described in your city papers : 
 
 " S. Teackle Wallis, Esq., was called for, and responded in a short but 
 forcible address. Like the Mayor he counselled the people to rely upon 
 the authorities, who would stand by them. He had not come to the meet 
 ing for the purpose of making a speech, but had come with the Mayor at 
 his request. It was not necessary to speak. If the blood of citizens on 
 the stones in the street did not speak, it was useless for men to speak. 
 
 " He assured the meeting that his heart was with the South, and he 
 was ready to defend Baltimore. He hoped the blood of the citizens, shed 
 by an invading foe, would obliterate all party differences, and seal the 
 covenant of brotherhood among the people." 
 
 With that speech before the people, not disavowed, which was an act 
 of war a formal participation in what had occurred and what immediately 
 followed you, on the 24th of April, with nine others, were elected to 
 the Legislature. 
 
 The Legislature met on the 26th, and on the 27th of April the day 
 on which the Senate disclaimed all constitutional power to pass an ordi 
 nance of secession both Houses passed, by a suspension of the rules, 
 the first law of the session, which is as follows : 
 
 " The Mayor and City Council may, 1 and they are hereby authorized to 
 raise and appropriate at their discretion, and in the modes and at the 
 times which they may judge best, all moneys whatsoever, which they may 
 deem necessary and proper for the defence and protection of said city, 
 and to provide for the payment of the same by taxation or otherwise." 
 
 On the same day, standing second in the published laws, and likewise 
 passed by a suspension of the rules, is an act to confirm and ratify an ordi 
 nance of the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore there recited, appro 
 priating $500,000 for the purpose of putting the city in a complete state 
 of defence against any description of danger arising, or which may arise 
 out of the present crisis, the same to be expended under the direction of 
 the Mayor of the city. 
 
 That money was appropriated for levying war against the United States ; 
 its avowed purpose was to resist the transit of troops over the usual and 
 direct route to the Capital, and it was placed in the hands of those already 
 engaged in that resistance. For, on the afternoon of the 19th of April, 
 Mayor Brown, at the meeting in the Square, declared that " he was a 
 citizen of Maryland, and would protect its soil with his life," against those 
 whom you called the invading foe. 
 
 He was, by law, a member, with Charles Howard, Wm. H. Gatchell, 
 John W. Davis and Charles D. Hinks, of the Board of Police Commis 
 sioners, and before midnight on the 19th of April, the Mayor and Board 
 of Police had ordered George P. Kane, the Marshal of Police, to destroy 
 the railroad bridges connecting the city with the Northern States, and be- 
 
10 
 
 lore daybreak all railway communication was at an end. They had ar 
 rested the march of the troops of the United States by a warlike operation 
 of the most decisive kind, and jeopardized the safety of the Capital and 
 the existence of the Government. 
 
 On the same evening, before departing to execute this order, Mr. 
 Kane, in reply to a despatch from Bradley T. Johnson, of Frederick, 
 offering troops, sent the following despatch : 
 
 " Thank you for your offer ; bring your men in by the first train, and 
 we will arrange with the railroad afterward. Send expresses over the 
 mountains and valleys of Maryland and Virginia for the riflemen to come 
 without delay. Fresh hordes will be down on us to-morrow, (the 20th.) 
 We will fight them or die. GEO. P. KANE." 
 
 This was posted in Frederick, with a placard as follows, signed by 
 Bradley T. Johnson: 
 
 "All men who will go with me will report themselves as soon as possi 
 ble, providing themselves with such arms and accoutrements as they can. 
 Double-barrelled shot-guns and buck shot are efficient." 
 
 And Johnson, with what men he could get, did go down and was taken 
 into the service of the Mayor and Board of Police, on that invitation. 
 They had, in addition, a trained and armed Police Corps of six hundred 
 men. They retained under their orders the Light Division, partly com 
 posed of enemies of the Government, commanded by General Steuart, its 
 avowed enemy, which the Governor had called out and placed under them, 
 on the 19th, for loyal purposes. They began, on the 20th of April, the 
 organization and arming of a volunteer force, limited only by their capaci 
 ty to get men and arms, and placed it under the command of Isaac R. 
 Trimble and Colonel Hughes, both now in the rebel service. 
 
 On the 20th of April, it was, that the City Council appropriated half a 
 million of dollars for the defence of the city against the dangers of the 
 crises that is, against what you described the day before as " the Invad 
 ing Foe," what Kane the day before called "fresh Hordes," what the 
 law calls United States Troops marching to the Capital of the nation : and 
 it was that appropriation which the Legislature ratified, in their second 
 act, only seven days afterward. 
 
 No time was lost in using the money. The report of the expenditures 
 is before me ; and the items will bear but one interpretation ; the chief of 
 them are for arms and ammunition, $24,174 ; for blankets and mattres 
 ses, $2,825 ; for marine and navy, (embracing hire and alterations of 
 steamers and wages of men,) $5,461; for rations, $9,914; for pay of 
 officers and men, $7,736 ; for horse and hack hire and hauling arms, 
 $3,472 ; for rent of armories and repairs, $1,748. Such are some of the 
 items for provisioning and equipping troops. 
 
 The Mayor and Board of Police bought 1,700 carbines and rifles, 4,000 
 pikes, 8,194 canister shot, 7,740 cannon balls, 4,956 pounds of lead, over 
 24.000 ball cartridges, 150,000 caps, besides other ammunition and arms 
 otherwise obtained. 
 
 Thus armed, the Mayor and Board of Police Commissioners took mili 
 tary control of the city ; the port and telegraph lines to Washington and 
 Harper s Ferry, while they cut those to the North ; the running of the 
 trains to Washington was arrested, while those to Harper s Ferry were 
 continued ; vessels were not allowed to leave port with provisions, muni 
 tions of war, &c. 
 
11 
 
 No vessel could sail unless by leave of the Board or of Isaac II . Trim 
 ble, commanding their volunteer force. This system was fully inaugu 
 rated on the 22d of April, and on that day Trimble, in a note to Chas. 
 Howard, discountenanced a military parade because the " display of mili 
 tary will be a sorry one, and calculated to dishearten our citizens," and 
 " if represented abroad will rather invite and encourage attempts from the 
 North to defy us and pass through the city," not to attack it. By an or 
 der in the minutes of the Board, on the same day, Trimble was authorized 
 to allow the Eastern Shore steamer to pass, on condition of not stopping 
 at Annapolis, where General Butler then was ; and General Steuart, by 
 letter of that date, writes to Charles Howard : 
 
 " I know not what to think of the rumor from Annapolis; but if the 
 Massachusetts troops are on the march from that place to Washington, I 
 shall be in motion very early to-morrow morning to pay my respects to 
 them." 
 
 During the 22d and 23d of April the telegrams and memoranda found 
 in the office of the Board, show they were in communication with Kenton 
 Harper, commanding six thousand rebels at Harper s Ferry; and their 
 agent " reported six thousand men ready to corne down." 
 
 The letters found further show that Gen. Steuart had applied to Gov. 
 Letcher, of Virginia, Gen. Cocke, at Alexandria, and Harper, at Harper s 
 Ferry, for arms, and had obtained the promise of 5,000 muskets. Letch - 
 er s letter to Steuart shows he ordered 1,000 to be sent, and 2,000 did 
 come to the possession of the Board of Police, and were claimed by Steu 
 art ; and Howard wrote to James M. Mason to know if he should deliver 
 them to Steuart, for the State of Maryland. 
 
 Fourteen hundred of them are now in Fort McHenry ; the correspon 
 dence is in the hands of the Government officers. So open and complete 
 was the state of war, that Hunter, commanding the United States receiv 
 ing ship in the harbor, wrote to the Board on the 23d of April, stating he 
 had occasion to employ a steamtug in the service of the United States, and 
 requesting them to authorize him to use one on that day in the harbor of 
 Baltimore and the adjacent waters; and that request was respectfully de 
 clined by the Board. 
 
 These acts of war were fully crowned by the order of the Police Com 
 missioners forbidding the display of the National Flag, and the arrest of 
 loyal men who refused to obey them. 
 
 The attempt which has occasionally been made to explain those acts as 
 precautions for the preservation of the internal peace of the State, or to 
 repel lawless incursions of armed men from the North, is unworthy of fur 
 ther notice. I cannot see how a candid man can be misled by them. 
 
 In this state of open war, the Police Commissioners went through the 
 forms of an election, by which, on the 24th of April, you were returned 
 to the Legislature to represent this rebellious action, by 9,000 votes out of 
 30,000 21,000 having stayed at home, and no one having dared to op 
 pose the armed rebellion, headed by the Police Commissioners ! 
 
 In the flush of confident success, you and your colleagues met at Fred 
 erick on the 26th ; on the 27th you furnished the sinews of war to your 
 confederates ; and a Force bill was reported to the Senate, and passed to 
 a second reading by 14 to 8, by which the State militia was reorganized 
 and placed under the power of the six Commissioners named in the bill, 
 all avowedly enemies of the United States ; the Governor was stripped of 
 
12 
 
 all power over it ; a large sum of money was appropriated to arm and 
 equip it, and the bill, if passed, would have placed the State under an ab 
 solute military despotism of the enemies of the Government, and left your 
 loyal Governor at their mercy. 
 
 But the small vote revealed the radical weakness of the rebellion in 
 Baltimore; on the 28th, the Police Commissioners began to apologize for 
 their conduct, and put a softer color on it ; the Force bill caused great 
 public indignation ; the Legislature was threatened by the loyal people of 
 Frederick with expulsion if they dared to pass it, and on the 3d of May 
 Baltimore added her protest and menace of resistance ; and the leaders in 
 the Legislature and their confederates out of it began to think of safety 
 while waiting events. 
 
 The Force bill was dropped ; on the 8th the Legislature passed a bill of 
 indemnity, exempting from prosecution or punishment the Mayor and Po 
 lice Commissioners and all persons who acted under their orders in their 
 effort to maintain peace and good order, and prevent further strife on and 
 after the occurrences on the 19th day of April, in consequence of such 
 acts, and obedience to such orders, " and repealing all laws in force in 
 this State at the time of said acts, so far as regards said persons and their 
 acts." 
 
 In a word, the Legislature outlawed the United States and their soldiers I 
 
 On the 9th, the next day, the Committee on Federal Relations present 
 ed their report and resolutions; which were adopted on the 14th; but 
 which you very inaccurately describe as "a resolution against the expe 
 diency of even calling a sovereign Convention of the people of the State." 
 
 The resolution was, that " under existing circumstances" it is inexpe 
 dient to call a Sovereign Convention of the State at this time. 
 
 The report shows a sudden variation in opinion on the subject; when 
 you met on the 26th of April, Convention was the general wish ; in less 
 than two weeks, on the 5th of May, the Committee tell us there was an 
 almost unanimous feeling against calling a Convention at the present time. 
 
 Two weeks more might, under favorable auspices, work another revo 
 lution of opinion. 
 
 " To the Committee," the report says, " the single fact of the military 
 occupation of our soil by the Northern troops in the service of the Gov 
 ernment, against the wishes of our people, and the solemn protest of the 
 State Executive, is a sufficient and conclusive reason for postponing the 
 subject to a period when the Federal ban shall be no longer upon us." 
 
 The Federal ban might be removed at any moment by military disas 
 ters, which you were doing your best to occasion ; and then the question 
 of expediency would be solved in a different sense. For the resolution 
 further declares the State of Maryland owes it to her own self-respect to 
 announce her resolute determination to have no part or lot, directly or in 
 directly, in its prosecution. 
 
 And the reasoning of the report adds to the significance of the reso 
 lution, for it maintains that, if, as the Governor thinks, the Constitution 
 is still over both State and General Government, "then the State of 
 Maryland can hold no neutrality when the Union is at war ! She takes 
 sides against it the instant she fails to take sides with it. Neutrality in 
 such a case is nullification,- pure and simple, and an armed neutrality is 
 merely rebellion and not union." Differing from the Governor, however, 
 the Committee have no hesitation in asserting and maintaining the right 
 
13 
 
 of the State, and its duty, to protest against the unconstitutional action of 
 the Administration, and refuse obedience to its unconstitutional demands," 
 that action being its war on the rebellious States, those demands being for 
 troops from Maryland. That is " nullification" and "rebellion" by the 
 confession of the report formally declared by both Houses of the Legisla 
 ture. 
 
 Still, the report proceeds further to say: " The present and only pos 
 sible attitude of the State toward the Federal Government is an attitude 
 of submission, unwilling and galling submission, on the part of those who 
 think and feel" as the Committee manifestly do. 
 
 It is frivolous to pretend that the Legislature had abandoned the pur 
 pose of calling a Sovereign Convention ; they merely wanted the removal 
 of the Federal ban to clothe actual rebellion with the forms of popular 
 sanction by calling a Convention to amend the Constitution. When they 
 met on the 4th of June, they felt the " Federal ban" still on them, and 
 adjourned from the 25th of June, to the 30th. 
 
 When they again met, the Federal ban " was still on them ; but in 
 the meantime their confederate, Kane, had been arrested by General 
 Banks; the Police Commissioners had delivered the city of Baltimore to 
 anarchy, and had been arrested being men in arms, commanding armed 
 men who had levied war on the United States. A joint Committee of both 
 Houses, on the 5th of August, presented a report, which left nothing for a 
 Sovereign Convention to do, and resolutions which pronounced the des 
 truction of the bonds of the State and Federal Governments ; for, with 
 full knowledge of the conduct of the Police Board above detailed, which 
 they had screened by a bill of indemnity, the Legislature of Maryland, on 
 the 7th of August, solemnly declared the arrest of Charles Howard, Wil 
 liam H. Gatchell and John W. Davis, to have been made "under frivo 
 lous and arbitrary pretexts, a criminal violation of the plainest and dearest 
 rights to which American citizens are born ;" and pronounced their arrest 
 "in their bearing on the authority and constitutional powers and privileges 
 of the State a revolutionary subversion of the Federal compact." 
 
 They dared do no more, for the " Federal ban" was still on them ; but 
 they adjourned on that day to the 14th of September, not without hope 
 that the disaster of Bull Run might ere that day remove the Federal 
 ban," and allow them safely to end that "unwilling and galling submis 
 sion," in accordance with their frequently avowed purposes and their per 
 sistent efforts. 
 
 Before that day you were arrested! 
 
 The only circumstance which could justify the President in permitting 
 the assembling of such a body which had already waged war against the 
 United States, asserted the revolutionary subversion of the Constitution, 
 and avowedly adjourned from time to time, to await the removal of the 
 " Federal ban " that it might more formally array the State in arms against 
 the Government would have been its entire insignificance or the distin 
 guished loyalty the people of Maryland had exhibited in the elections and 
 in raising troops. These were considerations of policy, and I am not in 
 clined to question the President s judgment. 
 
 But the arrest was rigidly legal and in the forms of law ; for Congress 
 had authorized the President to use military power to suppress the rebel 
 lion, and he might lawfully seize any one engaged in it, or whom he might 
 have reasonable cause to believe engaged in it. 
 
14 
 
 The joint Committee of the Legislature, of which you .were one, de 
 clare that the true and only loyalty of a free people consists in their 
 reverence for the laws and Constitution, and their obedience to the tribu 
 nals by which these are expounded." I cheerfully concur in that defini 
 tion ; and those tribunals of the highest resort have declared the law as I 
 have stated it. 
 
 The Supreme Court, by the mouth of Chief Justice Taney, has decided 
 that where the established Government has resorted to the rights and 
 usages of war to maintain itself and to overcome unlawful opposition, 
 "the officers engaged in its military service might lawfully arrest any one 
 who, from the information before them, they had reasonable grounds to 
 believe was engaged in the insurrection, and might order a house to be 
 forcibly entered and searched, where there was reasonable grounds for 
 suppposing he might be concealed." 
 
 And Chief Justice Marshall, in the same court, has said, if war be ac 
 tually levied that is, if a body of men be actually assembled, for trea 
 sonable purposes all those who perform any part, however minute, or 
 however remote from the scene of action, and who are actually leagued in 
 the general conspiracy, are to be considered as traitors. 
 
 The part the Legislature of Maryland performed in the war levied in 
 Maryland, and Virginia and the South, was neither minute nor remote; 
 and they exposed themselves to something more than mere arrest. 
 
 Of the indignities and indecencies inflicted on you, I know nothing ; if 
 they existed, they are to be greatly regretted; but they hardly equalled 
 those heaped by your confederates on the soldiers of the Union. 
 
 I have confined myself to designating the acts of the Legislature and 
 their confederates, which justify the President in treating them as public 
 enemies. I am ignorant of the opinions which you protest against being 
 considered to have changed ; nor are they material. No opinion is crimi 
 nal under our law ; even purposes unaccompanied by some attempt at exe 
 cution, however criminal morally, are legally innocent ; but acts of war 
 are the objects of military suppression, and such were the acts of the Leg 
 islature of Maryland. 
 
 I regret to be obliged to admit that some arrests have been made by an 
 abuse of military power ; you are not more sensitive to those wrongs than 
 I am, and I have striven to prevent or redress them ; but, sir, you must 
 pardon me for saying that your arrest is not one of that character. 
 
 Respectfully, your ob t ser vt, 
 
 JOHN SHERMAN. 
 
REJOINDER OF MR. WALLIS, 
 
 BALTIMORE, January 3c, 1863. 
 ffon. John Sherman, United States Senate : 
 
 SIR : I received on Sunday, December 28th, the letter bearing date 
 the 26th, which you addressed to me, in professed reply to mine of the 
 12th. I find it also in the New York Times of December 31st, with an 
 editorial notice from which I infer that it was forwarded to that journal, at 
 least as soon as it was transmitted to me. My own letter would not have 
 been handed to the World for publication, had not the lapse of a week, 
 without even an acknowledgement of its receipt, given me reason to sup 
 pose that you intended to be discourteous as well as unjust. The tenor of 
 your reply, as you have at last furnished it, does nothing to relieve me of 
 that impression, it being obviously intended for a party pamphlet, ad cap- 
 tandum, instead of an answer, in good faith, on the subject upon which I 
 addressed you. 
 
 You have entirely misapprehended the purpose of my letter of the 12th, 
 if you really suppose, as you profess to do, that I desired or attempted to 
 convince you of my own "loyalty," or that of the Legislature of Mary 
 land, to which I had the honor to belong in 1861. I do not mean to be 
 uncivil, when I assure you that nothing was farther from my thoughts, 
 and that there are few things to which I could be possibly more indifferent, 
 personally, than the judgment which gentlemen who bear your relation to 
 the governing party in the United States may choose to form, in regard to 
 myself, my opinions, or my action. Still less would I venture to deal so 
 disrespectfully with the General Assembly of Maryland, as to recognize, in 
 you or your partisan associates, any right or fitness to pass authoritative 
 judgment upon them or their official conduct. 
 
 As I understand the form of government under which the people of this 
 country have, until within the last two years, supposed themselves to live, 
 no citizen is criminally amenable, for his public or private conduct, except 
 to the laws of the land as administered by the constituted judicial tribunals. 
 "No opinion," you yourself admit, "is criminal under our law," and I 
 think I may assume whether you admit it, or not that there are no acts, 
 for which any citizen can be lawfully held to account, except those which 
 the law has forbidden. No officer of the Government, whether civil or 
 military, has any more right as I have been taught to create offences, 
 or define them except only as the law prescribes, than he has to rob or 
 murder on the highway, or proclaim himself king or sultan. It is of the 
 essence of constitutional government in peace or in war, as has always here 
 tofore been understood that the Constitution and laws should be masters, 
 and public officers, like private individuals, only their servants. Beyond 
 the lines of their strict constitutional powers, such officers are as literally 
 without authority, before the law, as the humblest citizens; for they are, 
 
16 
 
 in fact, private wrong doers, and not public officers, from the moment that 
 they have transgressed those constitutional limits. 
 
 Gentlemen of your way of thinking, however, have adjudged these rudi- 
 mental and long established principles to be wholly obsolete, under the sort 
 of government which you need, and have set up, to serve your purposes. 
 You have accordingly borrowed from the vocabulary of despotism, the name 
 of " disloyalty," to designate that undefined and undefinable offence not 
 known to free institutions, but which you have seen fit, in the plenitude 
 of your prerogatives, to create which consists in questioning the wisdom, 
 canvassing the policy, doubting the integrity, or, if need be, resisting the 
 corruptions and usurpations, of those who temporarily hold and prostitute 
 power. With like propriety and consistency you have adopted the catch 
 word of " loyalty," to indicate the equally undefinable public virtues and 
 excellences which you would have it believed that yourselves and your 
 partisans embody and monopolize. Knowing no "loyalty," myself, in 
 my relation to the Federal Government, except that obedience which I 
 owe, as a citizen, to the laws and Constitution, lawfully and constitution 
 ally expounded and administered, I repeat that I am as free as a man can 
 be, from the slightest desire that you or your fellow partisans, or any one 
 else, should esteem me " loyal" after your fashion. Recognizing, on the 
 other hand, no " disloyalty" to the United States, except in disobedience 
 to the Constitution which my State adopted and ratified, when she became 
 a member of the Federal Government, or to the laws constitutionally en 
 acted under that instrument, I should probably feel myself honored, nine 
 times out of ten, by your being pleased to consider me " disloyal." As to 
 the more than Roman severity of the rebuke, which you assume the privi 
 lege of administering to me, in saying that you could not " fail to be im 
 pressed with the entire absence of any avowal of loyal obedience to the 
 Government" on my part, in my letter to you I must be excused if I 
 cannot treat it with the gravity which you seem to have mustered to pro 
 nounce it. I have not yet learned that one American citizen is under any 
 obligation to approach another certainly, in no sense, more than his 
 equal with genuflexions or professions of faith or "obedience" of any 
 sort ; and I cannot but regard the professed expectation upon your part, to 
 the contrary, as an amusingly presumptuous form of the hallucination, 
 under which gentlemen of your political connection, at this time, seem to 
 labor, when they set themselves up, above the law and its tribunals, as Sie 
 judges and executioners of their fellow-citizens and equals. It is certainly, 
 too, a new idea among gentlemen, at all events that a request to you, 
 such as my letter contained, to correct a misstatement of fact, should be 
 subject to demurrer, upon your part, because it was not ushered in with a 
 sort of governmental sacrament. Your notion that the truth is not entitled 
 to vindication, unless it first makes profession of "loyalty," is of kin to 
 the other doctrine, so popular with you, that "rebels have no rights." 
 
 But there is still another and a very satisfactory reason, peculiar to 
 yourself, why I was especially careless about conciliating your good opin 
 ion in the matter referred to. I have before me a published letter of yours, 
 in which you explain your refusal to vote, in 1861, for the resolution of 
 Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, approving the suspension of the habeas cor 
 pus by Mr. Lincoln. You ^distinctly state, in that letter, as your reason 
 for withholding your vote not that you disapproved of the President s 
 acts for, on the contrary, you " cordially approved and justified them" 
 
17 
 
 but that you could not say, with Mr. Wilson, that they " were strictly 
 legal, or within his (the President s) delegated powers." " The legal 
 power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus" you add, "has been recently 
 claimed for the President ; but I am convinced that, by the plain meaning 
 of the Constitution, Congress alone must determine the cases in which the 
 public safety requires its suspension" " Still," you go on to say, "there 
 are times when our Executive officer must anticipate the action of Con 
 gress ; but, in such a case, he assumes the hazard of a bill of impeach 
 ment, or a bill of indemnity. The President merely assumed this 
 hazard, and, in the vacancy of Congress, wisely assumed a power not dele 
 gated to him by the Constitution." 
 
 When a Senator of the United States, bound by his official oath to sup 
 port the Constitution, can bring himself to declare that he cordially " ap 
 proves and justifies," in his official place, the action of the President in 
 assuming " a power not delegated to him by the Constitution" in other 
 words, that he approves and justifies a sheer, admitted usurpation and vio 
 lation of the constitutional rights of the citizen, by the Chief Executive 
 of the country who, outside of the Constitution, is nothing, and who has 
 solemnly sworn " to preserve, protect and defend " that Constitution, " to 
 the best of his ability," and is bound, by its paramount provisions, to " take 
 care that the laws be faithfully executed " I must be allowed to entertain 
 my own opinion as to the fitness of such a Senator, to understand or ap 
 preciate his own relation, or that of any other person, to a constitutional 
 government. 
 
 You will permit me to add, that when you addressed me the first para 
 graph of the letter before me, and after dwelling upon your veneration, 
 " as a student of the common law," for " the right of personal liberty," 
 informed me that you regarded it "as never to be affected except for 
 crime, or in the case provided by the Constitution, when the public safety 
 is jeoparded by rebellion or invasion," but said that you thought the ar 
 rest and imprisonment of myself and my colleagues " within this rule," 
 you must have lost sight of the doctrine of the letter from which I have 
 just quoted. It is difficult for a man, whose ideas are not stimulated by 
 the atmosphere of "loyalty" in which you move, to understand how you 
 can regard our arrest as "within this rule" of the Constitution, when 
 you know that we were arrested by Executive mandate alone, without any 
 previous authority given by Congress to suspend the right of personal 
 liberty," and when you, yourself, have expressly declared that by "the 
 plain meaning of the Constitution, Congress alone" and not the President, 
 "must determine the cases in which the public safety requires its suspen 
 sion." Surely you do not ask us to believe that when you used this lan 
 guage, in 1861, and refused to join Mr. Wilson in saying that the sus 
 pension of the habeas corpus by the President was "strictly legal or within 
 his delegated powers" you meant to imply, or entertained, the opinion 
 now suggested in your letter of December 26th, that Congress, by the 
 mere act of authorizing the President "to use military power to suppress 
 the rebellion," ipso facto suspended the habeas corpus, and rendered "rig 
 idly legal and in the forms of law" the arrest of any and every citizen, 
 without oath or warrant, whenever and wherever the President in his dis 
 cretion might see fit. Yet, unless you do mean thus to tax the credulity 
 of the public, I do not see what escape there is left to you, from a discrep 
 ancy which is not reputable in either a lawyer or a Senator. 
 2 
 
18 
 
 But I cease to be surprised at your thus relying upon the forgetfulness 
 or ignorance of your readers, when I turn to the quotation from the opin 
 ion of the Supreme Court, as delivered by Chief Justice Taney in the case 
 of Luther vs. Borden, (7 Howard, 45,) to which you carefully omit a par 
 ticular reference, but which you cite as authority for the monstrous propo 
 sition, that the President of the United States and the military officers un 
 der him, are clothed by the mere pendency of a civil war recognized by 
 Congress with the authority to arrest citizens and search houses all over 
 the country, without process of law, whenever in their judgment there 
 may be reasonable ground for doing so. No one knows better than your 
 self, that in the opinion from which you made the quotation in question, 
 the Chief Justice was speaking as the Court was passing judgment con 
 cerning a case in which the military right to make arrests and searches 
 was recognized as arising, not from an implied Executive prerogative, 
 growing out of the mere pendency of hostilities, but from a specific legis 
 lative act of the State of Rhode Island, by which martial law was ex 
 pressly and specially declared, and from which alone the Governor and his 
 military subordinates derived all the authority which they pretended to ex 
 ercise, or the Court pretended to ascribe to them in the premises. It would 
 not at best have been very creditable to you, as a professional man, to in 
 sist even if you had not concealed the material facts of the case that 
 the Supreme Court of the United States had in effect recognized the pre 
 rogative which you claim for the President, in the absence of express au 
 thority from Congress merely because they had recognized it in the Gov 
 ernor of Rhode Island, under the express authority of the Legislature of 
 the State. You could with difficulty, look a Court of Justice in the face 
 and argue, upon such a foundation, that a declaration of war, or a recog 
 nition by Congress of a war or insurrection as existing, is ipso facto, a 
 proclamation of martial law over the length and breadth of the republic. 
 And yet such is your proposition, and you have kept back the facts which 
 would have enabled your unprofessional readers to discover, as all your 
 professional readers know, how reckless your statement is, that the Su 
 preme Court of the United States have given it their sanction in the case 
 from Rhode Island. You have as carefully kept back the other fact, 
 equally well known to you, that in the memorable habeas corpus case of 
 Merryman, the Chief Justice of the United States, to whom you would as 
 cribe the atrocious and despotic doctrine you are advocating, repudiated it 
 with the most emphatic directness and solemnity interposing, as he best 
 could, between its operation and the liberty of the citizen, all the force of 
 his great intellect, the fullness of his learning and wisdom, the purity and 
 dignity of his character, and the authority alas! helpless of his venera 
 ble age and elevated office. Happily you cannot keep back the palpable 
 and overwhelming fact, that popular opinion seduced or frightened for a 
 while from its propriety has already trampled, in its reaction, upon the 
 fallacies and fictions with which corrupt politicians and venal lawyers had 
 sought to circumvent the intelligence of the people, while usurpation laid 
 its hand upon their rights. Others are aware, if you yourself are forgetful 
 of the fact, that as Senator from Ohio, you no longer represent the feelings 
 or opinions of the people of your State, and that this result is chiefly due to 
 their indignant repudiation of the arbitrary and anti-republican doctrines, 
 of which you are still one of the lingering defenders. 
 
 The startling character of the legal heresies which you have promulga- 
 
19 
 
 ted, and the extreme disingenuousness of the mode in which you have pre 
 sented them, has led me, for public reasons, to enter much further into 
 the discussion of them than I had wished, for I personally feel as little in 
 terest in your inconsistencies as I do in your opinions. My letter of the 
 12th December was addressed to you concerning a matter of fact and not a 
 matter of doctrine. You were reported in the newspapers as having used 
 the language which I quoted in that letter, concerning the members of the 
 Maryland Legislature, who were arrested and confined with me by the 
 order of Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Seward. Taking your reported language in 
 connection with the explicit statement made, last spring, by Mr. Hickman, 
 in the House of Representatives, upon the alleged authority of the Presi 
 dent, and with the language used by Mr. Fessenden, in the Senate, a few 
 days after your observations were made all of which I referred to in my 
 letter I understood, and had a right to regard the whole of you as making 
 the charge, that the Legislature of Maryland, when its members were 
 arrested, had specifically in contemplation the passage of an ordinance of 
 secession. I understood Mr. Fessenden as further saying that the Presi 
 dent had " evidence" of such intention. I took it for granted that you 
 believed your statement to be true when you made it, and I addressed you, 
 in perfect good faith, simply to let you know that it was not true and ap 
 peal to your candor to correct it. I presumed that you would be glad to 
 do so, but at all events I felt it due to myself and my colleagues and to 
 the truth, not to leave uncontradicted a misstatenient, to which your official 
 position and the frequent reiteration of the same story, in Congress, might 
 give importance and credit, if it were not denied. If it had been a mere 
 expression of your opinion concerning the merits or demerits of my col 
 leagues and myself, I should certainly have cared and said nothing about it. 
 Under the circumstances, your proper and natural course was a very 
 plain one. If you had not asserted the fact which I supposed you to have 
 asserted, you had but to say so, and there was an end of the matter. If 
 you had asserted it and had the means of proving it to be true, you could 
 have refused to alter your statement, and have produced your evidence or 
 declined doing so, in your discretion. If you had asserted it and were 
 unable io maintain it, you could have withdrawn the assertion, or have 
 let it stand, according to your disposition or indisposition to be just. You 
 have done none of these things. You deny that you made the statement 
 of which I complain, and then reproach me for having merely replied to 
 what you were reported as saying, instead of anticipating and answering 
 what you were not reported as saying, in the newspapers which I read, and 
 what, therefore, I had never seen. After wondering at this and shudder 
 ing at the absence of all " avowal of loyal obedience," in my letter, you 
 proceed to argue that my whole communication was based upon a techni 
 cality. It was a " technical denial," you say which you explain, to sig 
 nify that I took issue with you upon the isolated charge of our having in 
 tended to pass an ordinance of secession. Such an ordinance, you tell 
 me, would have been "but one form of arraying the State of Maryland 
 against the United States," and I have confined myself to a denial of our 
 having contemplated that "form," instead of defending the Legislature 
 against the general and substantial charge of having intended, in some form 
 or other, "to defy the United States and resist its authority." I believe 
 I state your point fairly and clearly. Having made it, you dedicate the 
 remainder of your letter to a promiscuous assault upon the Mayor and Po~ 
 
20 
 
 lice Commissioners of Baltimore, the proceedings of the Legislature gen 
 erally, and my individual course and declarations, with a large digression 
 upon the history of the excitement in Baltimore on and after the 19th of 
 April, 1861. From all of these things you draw and assert the conclusion 
 that we were all lawfully and justifiably arrested and imprisoned whether 
 we intended or did not intend to pass the ordinance of secession, which was 
 the exclusive topic of my letter. 
 
 Now, I do not know how all this may strike the mass of the partisans 
 who read the Times, and for whom you wrote your letter, but it seems to 
 me that the class for whom a Senator of the United States ought to write, 
 will see, at a glance, that it is a mere evasion and a clap-trap. Who was 
 it that raised and framed the issue as to the intention of the Legislature of 
 Maryland to pass an ordinance of secession ? Not I, certainly, but Mr. 
 Lincoln, and Mr. Hickman, and Mr. Fessenden, and yourself, as I saw 
 your speech reported. You were the accusing parties. You had the 
 evidence " before you or you ought to have had when you attempted 
 to justify the outrage which had been inflicted upon us. You framed your 
 indictment, and, in order to escape the just reproach of making loose and 
 random and indefinite accusations, and of having deprived men of their 
 liberty without specific and ascertained cause therefor, you selected, 
 among you, and agreed upon the charge that we had intended to throw our 
 State out of the Union by adopting a secession ordinance. You put that 
 fact forward, of your own choice, as the burden of our guilt and the cor 
 ner-stone of your justification. The President of the United States, 
 speaking through Mr. Hickman, not only made the accusation in words, 
 but with his usual graceful playfulness, when men s dearest rights are in 
 question, had his joke about " the pockets" in which the " resolutions of 
 secession" were to have been carried to Frederick. The Government 
 newspapers, in Baltimore and elsewhere, teemed, at the time of our arrest 
 and afterwards, with stories about the mysterious ordinance." The ruf 
 fians who were sent by the Secretary of State to our dwellings, at mid 
 night, to seize upon our correspondence and rifle our desks and safes, 
 spoke, openly, in the presence of the inmates of our houses, concerning 
 the existence of such an ordinance in the possession of some us, and of 
 their instructions to search for it. In my own case, they were for six or 
 seven hours in pursuit of it, with all the ingenuity and the appliances of 
 more respectable burglars. Produce, or get the President to produce att 
 the official papers connected with our arrest, and I will almost be witting to 
 stake my whole case on the fact, that they will be found to specify our in 
 tention to pass such an ordinance, as the precise offence creating the necessi 
 ty for the suppression of the Legislature. In more than one of the pub 
 lic journals, it was mentioned and repeated long afterwards at the North, 
 when I was in Fort Warren that an " ordinance," supposed to be in my 
 handwriting, had actually been delivered to the Secretary of State, whose 
 delight at the possession of such a treasure was, one day, rudely put an 
 end to, by the discovery that it was a forgery the work, as was stated, 
 of some " loyal" clerk in his own office, whom I had once prosecuted for 
 a former crime. I do not know that the story was false, for it was not 
 officially promulgated nor do I know that it was true. I refer to it, and 
 to the other circumstances which I have mentioned, in order to show that 
 when the intended passage of an ordinance of secession was set up as our 
 offence, and as the justification for our arrest, the design of the Govern- 
 
21 
 
 ment was specifically to fix upon us that specific " treasonable purpose." 
 I had no reason or right to believe that, instead of meaning what they 
 said, and what they charged, the President and his defenders meant some 
 thing else, and not what they said and charged. I had no right or rea 
 son to suppose that a general, indefinite, treasonable mind and purpose, 
 not concentrated in any particular act, was all that was meant to be as 
 cribed to us, and that when I denied the specific and oft repeated accusa 
 tion, upon which all of you agreed, I should be told that it was a " tech 
 nical denial," and that I ought to have entered upon a defence of the Po 
 lice authorities of Baltimore, the difficulties on and after the 19th of April, 
 and the proceedings, at large, of the Legislature. If I had done so, would 
 you not have been the first to say that I had guiltily evaded the real and 
 vital question ? If I, or some other person interested, had not denied that 
 we intended to pass the ordinance in controversy, would you not have as 
 sumed and have claimed the right to assume, that such an intention was 
 justly ascribed to us? And if, after gentlemen of high position, like the 
 President and members of Congress, have themselves deliberately selected 
 and framed and tendered an issue of fact, they call the denial of the fact 
 in issue a technicality, as you do, what reason have I to assume that 
 they will not again do the same thing ? What grounds have I for believ 
 ing that you mean to stand by the fresh statements, in your letter, of 
 what you call facts, any more than by the other alleged fact of the ordi 
 nance of secession, by which you now refuse to stand? Would I have 
 any security, after showing the untruth and futility of them all, that you 
 would not say I had written a series of "technical denials" of isolated 
 facts, and that the broad fact of my general " disloyalty," or that of some 
 of my friends and acquaintances, was all that you had intended to charge ? 
 There is no arguing permit me to say, with gentlemen who adopt that 
 style of reasoning. You furnish more than one striking illustration of its 
 vices in the very case before us. You would have it, for instance, that it 
 made no difference to the President, and makes none in the argument, 
 whether the Legislature of Maryland was about to pass an ordinance itself, 
 or to call a Convention which might do the same thing. The one inten 
 tion, if you are to be credited, would have been as good a justification as 
 the other, for tho arrest of the Legislature. You can hardly mean this, 
 although you say it. Any ordinary person who did not desire to arrest for 
 the mere sake of arresting, would suppose, that when the purpose of the 
 President was to prevent, by summary arrests, the passage of an ordinance 
 of secession, he would arrest only those who intended to pass it, and that 
 instead of arresting the Legislature for intending to call a Convention, he 
 would not even arrest the members of the Convention itself, until he had 
 reasonable certainty that they intended to do the act which he feared. 
 Certainly it ill becomes you to assert that the intention of calling a Con 
 vention would have been a " treasonable and disloyal purpose," when the 
 " entire insignificance " which your courtesy ascribes to the Legislature, 
 and the " distinguished loyalty " with which it clothes the people of Mary 
 land, must render it quite certain, in your judgment, that a Convention, 
 if called, would have triumphantly overturned the Legislature and seces 
 sion together. But the point is not worth pursuing farther. Your reply, 
 I repeat, is an evasion and not a maintenance of your position. My denial 
 was not a " technical denial," but a denial as substantial as the deliberate 
 and intentional charge which it repelled. 
 
22 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to follow you through the long array of alle 
 gations and insinuations, outside of the only question between us, by which 
 you endeavor to bolster up the justice of the proceedings which for so long 
 deprived the Mayor and Police Commissioners of Baltimore and the mem 
 bers of the State Legislature of their liberty. I have no means whatever 
 of access to the documents which you profess to cite or to the correspon 
 dence which you say " is in the hands of the Government officers," and 
 upon which you found your principal impeachment of the fidelity of the 
 police authorities. I cannot tell to what extent they exist, or what is their 
 authenticity. But having, as a member of the Legislature, examined and 
 fully approved the course of the Police Board, I know enough of the 
 facts to justify me in declaring that the statements in regard to them, of 
 which you have allowed your letter to be the vehicle to the public, are 
 partial, garbled and unjust, and frequently untrue. I willingly persuade 
 myself that you have been deceived into promulgating them, for I fancy 
 that I can see in them the work of hands which are not yours, but which 
 private disappointments and malice, and local interests and hatred, have 
 made the perpetual bearers of falsehood and malignant counsels to the 
 Executive chamber, during the whole long agony of this wretched war. 
 If you had reflected, for an instant, it seems to me that you would not 
 have permitted yourself to enter upon a crusade, under such guidance. 
 
 It is now nearly eighteen months since the Baltimore Commissioners of 
 Police, then prisoners illegally confined at Fort McHenry, presented their 
 respectful memorial to the two Houses of Congress. They protested their 
 innocence of any offence against the laws of the country ; insisted upon 
 their right to be informed of the accusations against them ; invited scru- 
 t ny into their whole conduct, private and official, and asserted " their 
 readiness to meet, without a moment s delay, any charge which might be 
 responsibly laid against their individual or official proceedings." Suggest 
 ing their inability to obtain redress, pending the suspension of the habeas 
 corpus in Maryland, they "respectfully and earnestly invoked the imme 
 diate interposition of Congress in their behalf." That memorial was treat 
 ed with open indignity and contempt. From the moment of its presenta 
 tion, down to this hour, neither the Senate, of which you are a member, 
 nor the lower House, has given any heed to their complaints, or taken one 
 step towards the vindication of their rights or of public liberty or justice 
 in their behalf. You have not given them the accusations against them 
 (if any) or the names of their accusers. You have not afforded them an 
 opportunity of even proving their innocence, much less have you allowed 
 them a public hearing or trial, before either a Congressional committee or 
 the constituted judicial tribunals. Grand jury after grand jury, selected 
 by a Marshal of Mr. Lincoln s appointment, (to say nothing of grand ju 
 ries of the State,) has met, since they were taken from their homes in 
 July, 1861. At least one Federal grand jury has deliberately investi 
 gated the whole proceedings which you have discussed in your letter, with 
 all the evidence in the possession of the Government before it including, 
 of course, everything to which you have had access, in order to prepare 
 the defence of the Government which you have published. Yet no bill 
 of indictment has been found, or could be procured to be found. The 
 House of Representatives, certainly and perhaps the Senate also called 
 upon the President to state the grounds upon which the gentlemen in 
 question were arrested and imprisoned, but the President refused the infor- 
 
23 
 
 mation, as " incompatible with the public interests." You were all satis 
 fied with that refusal, and there you and those who think and side with 
 you representatives of a people calling itself free, and boasting yourselves 
 the special apostles of freedom allowed the case of your oppressed and 
 helpless fellow-citizens to rest, unheard, unconsidered scorned. There 
 was not a man of you, who could rise above the level of political and sec 
 tional vindictiveness to an act of simple, common justice, much less to vin 
 dicate a great principle, or to strike an honest blow for public and private 
 freedom. You allowed the victims to languish, for nearly a year and a 
 half, in prison after prison, to which they were dragged you emancipa 
 ting negroes, the while, by the thousand, as the President now is, by the 
 million. And now that the prisons have been opened, and the prisoners 
 in question released without condition not willingly, but because public 
 opinion had demanded it, at the ballot-box, and the gathering storm of 
 public retribution was too portentous to be longer disregarded you, a 
 Senator, who have aided in doing all this injury, are not ashamed gratuit 
 ously to attack, at an unfair advantage, through the columns of a newspa 
 per, the men whom you have so long refused to charge, or hear, or try, 
 publicly, fairly, openly, and where they could meet their accusers face to 
 face, according to their rights and your obligations. You consent to gath 
 er up, from " the hands of Government officers" and local informers, for 
 publication against them, ex parte statements and apocryphal scraps, to 
 the sources and originals of which they have no access for challenge or 
 disproof, and under pretext of replying to a letter from me, upon a differ 
 ent subject, which you evade, you thus seek to cover the retreat and the 
 shame of the Government and your own dereliction of duty. Do you 
 think this is worthy of you, as a gentleman or a Senator ? Do you think 
 it honorable nay even decent in the Executive, or his subordinates, ir 
 responsibly to furnish to you, in such a way and for such purposes, what 
 Mr. Lincoln alleged that it would be " incompatible with the public in 
 terests" to disclose to you, as a member of the Senate, to be used legiti 
 mately and responsibly, for public ends, in your official place and sphere ? 
 If the incompatibility, which he pretended, has now ceased to exist, why 
 does he not respond to the requisition of Congress, as becomes him, in 
 stead of privately retailing his " evidence" to you for the pages of a par 
 ty journal ? If the President and his Secretaries of State and War are 
 really able to establish the case against the Police authorities, which you 
 have set up for them, why have they not done so ? Why has no grand 
 jury been able to find an indictment against the alleged criminals ? If 
 there are letters, and minutes, and telegrams of the parties in question, 
 which would condemn them, as you pretend, and of which the President 
 and his Secretaries have control, why are they not produced, openly and 
 upon official responsibility, before some tribunal honest and fearless enough 
 to drag out the whole truth and bring the accused or the accusers to 
 shame and justice ? You know very well that the Mayor of Baltimore, 
 and Messrs. Howard and Gatchell, two of the Police Commissioners, dur 
 ing the whole of their long imprisonment, defied and denounced the arbi 
 trary power and conduct of the government, demanding their release as a 
 right, and refusing to purchase it by the shadow of a concession. You 
 know that they were at last discharged, without yielding the ninth part of 
 a hair. Do you think that Mr. Seward and Mr. Stanton are magnanimous 
 and benevolent persons, likely to give way to such contumacy, where they 
 
24 
 
 have only to produce against the recusants, from the files of their detective 
 office, conclusive evidence of treason ? Is there one word you have said in 
 your long letter, to demonstrate the justice of the arrest of these gentle 
 men, which, if true, would not make it as rigidly the sworn and bounden 
 duty of Mr. Lincoln, upon his theory and yours, to retain them in custody 
 still, for trial and punishment ? 
 
 State the thing as you may, sir, it is not a thing for either you or the 
 Executive to be proud of. Your mode of dealing with the guilt or inno 
 cence of men and their liberty, is at variance with the institutions, the 
 habits, the very instincts of a free people, whose love of justice and fair 
 play, and, let me add, of truth has not yet been entirely debauched away 
 by their representatives and rulers. I will not do the injured men in ques 
 tion the wrong, nor public sentiment the outrage, nor myself the discredit, 
 of submitting their case to your arbitrament, or to trial upon your news 
 paper impeachment. I assert, now, as a matter within my own knowledge, 
 that when, as one of the counsel of the Police Commissioners, I visited 
 General Banks with my colleagues, on the very day when the arrest was 
 made, General Banks, who had made it, assured us, explicity, that there 
 was no charge against our clients, impeaching their integrity in any way, 
 and that they had been arrested chiefly by way of precaution. I state, 
 further, from my personal knowledge also, that on the 20th of April, 
 1861, when I accompanied the Mayor of this city to Washington, where 
 he had been invited by Mr. Lincoln for consultation, the President him 
 self, in the presence of his whole Cabinet and of Lieut. Gen. Scott, as well 
 as of my companions and myself, more than once volunteered to declare, 
 that he had carefully investigated the conduct of the Police authorities of 
 Baltimore on the 19th of April, and was entirely satisfied that they had 
 discharged their duty in good faith, and to the best of their ability. No 
 member of the Cabinet ventured to gainsay the judgment of the Presi 
 dent, although the Mayor, with perfect frankness, informed them that in 
 conjunction with Gov. Hicks, the Police Board, of which he was a mem 
 ber, had ordered the destruction of the bridges that " warlike operation, 7 
 which you denounce as treason in the concrete. As the name of ex-Gov 
 ernor Hicks has been recently added to the list of patriots and statesmen 
 who adorn the Senate, on the " loyal " side, his certificate upon the ques 
 tion may perhaps weigh somewhat in your judgment. If you will turn 
 to his late Excellency s message to the Legislature of Maryland, on the 
 25th of April, 1861, you will find him declaring that "the Mayor and 
 Police Board gave to the Massachusetts soldiers (on the 19th) all the pro 
 tection they could afford, acting with the utmost promptness and bravery." 
 I trust that after reading it, you may modify to some extent the lawyer- 
 like proposition of your letter, that it was an overt act of treason for the 
 Legislature of Maryland to pass the act for the protection of the Police 
 authorities, which you declare to have " outlawed the United States and 
 their soldiers." That statute did not pretend to impair private rights or 
 remedies, as the indemnity law recently passed by the House of Represen 
 tatives, in Mr. Lincoln s behalf, so unblushingly and absurdly does. Surely 
 you do not mean to intimate it, as your opinion, that Mr. Lincoln s indem 
 nity act " outlaws " not only^ the thousands who have been his victims, 
 but the whole of the citizens of the States over whom he has brandished 
 the sword of martial law. If you do, I trust that the country will hear 
 from you in the Senate, and not through the Times. 
 
25 
 
 But I have dwelt too long on this branch of the subject. I undertake 
 to promise you, in leaving it, that whenever the President of the United 
 States, on his own responsibility, will give to the late Police authorities of 
 Baltimore an opportunity of confronting their accusers, and of being heard 
 and judged as free men may submit to be, without surrendering their rights 
 and self-respect, they will vindicate their conduct from every just reproach, 
 to the satisfaction of all whose good opinion is worth having. If you 
 doubt what I say, you have only to have the experiment made. I think 
 I may add that the gentlemen named will manage to find for themselves a 
 way of bringing the matter before some legitimate tribunal, where some, 
 at least, of those who have been engaged in "outlawing" them, will have 
 an opportunity of ascertaining how far the justification you have set up is 
 well-founded, in fact or law. 
 
 I pass, now, to your assault upon the Maryland Legislature, con 
 cerning which, and its proceedings as challenged and grossley dis 
 torted and misrepresented by you, I propose to enter into but little 
 discussion. It is due, however, to my colleagues from Baltimore and 
 to myself, that I should deny, in the most unqualified manner, the truth 
 of the statement which you make, that our election was but a " form," and 
 that we were chosen only because " no one dared to oppose the armed re 
 bellion, headed by the Police Commissioners." Among all the wholesale 
 fictions with which you have been furnished, by your collaborators here, 
 there is not one more profligate than this. I assert, what no man of ve 
 racity will deny here under his own signature, and alleging fact in veri 
 fication of his denial that from the time of the inauguration of the Board 
 of Police of Baltimore in the spring of 1860, down to the hour of its sup 
 pression by military force, in the summer of 1861, the freedom of the bal 
 lot-box and of access to it was as sacredly and perfectly guarded and 
 maintained for all citizens, of all parties and opinions, as ever, under any 
 system, was or could be possible. I challenge the production of any charge 
 to the contrary, from the worst partisan or the most corrupt press among 
 us, until after the suppression of the Board had rendered slander neces 
 sary to vindicate usurpation. I assert, and am ready to prove, whenever 
 a single fact to the contrary is alleged, that the preparations for securing 
 a free and fair election, on the 24th of April, 1861, were as ample and in 
 as good faith as ever before, and that no man in the whole community 
 not even the most rabid and obnoxious and unworthy partisan would have 
 met with the slightest obstacle, in voting for any candidates whom he might 
 have preferred. Indeed I challenge proof to the contrary, when I further 
 assert, that, during the whole of the excitement which occupied and fol 
 lowed the 19th of April, the Board of Police extended to every citizen of 
 Baltimore the most ample and efficient protection in person and property, 
 and that security in both were actually had, by all, amid the heats of the 
 / strife which occurred and was impending, to an extent which puts to shame 
 the contemporaneous condition of the large cities of the North. You may 
 doubt or disbelieve this, honestly, I admit. But it is true nevertheless. 
 You have no right to doubt it, because it was officially stated to you by the 
 Mayor and City Council, in their memorial to Congress, in 1861, and by 
 the Board of Police in theirs, and an investigation of its truth was respect 
 fully and earnestly besought at your hands, which you refused. But I do 
 not wonder at your doubting it, amid the crowd and press of falsehoods 
 with which your partisans, here and elsewhere, have overwhelmed the his- 
 
26 
 
 tory of those times, during the imprisonment and absence, and the en 
 forced silence, of those whom you have all joined in endeavoring to crush 
 for their opinions. That many persons, apprehending further military 
 collision, left the city with their families, for the time, is undoubtedly true. 
 That others, who probably are your special informants, ran incontinently 
 away, in sheer fright, when there was not the slightest danger to them or 
 theirs, is equally true, and it is quite natural that these last should mag 
 nify the dangers before which their own heroism quailed. But that any 
 man, of any party, who asked protection from the Police, had any difficulty 
 in obtaining it, or that any citizen of Baltimore had any real reason for 
 seeking personal safety in flight, is wholly untrue. Least of all, as I have 
 said, is there any ground for intimating a question as to the perfect free 
 dom of the ballot-box on the 24th of April. The vote was small, be 
 cause there was but one ticket in the field; yet, although T was a mem 
 ber of the delegation elected, I will not allow false delicacy to prevent me 
 from saying, that I believe it was personally unexceptionable to the great 
 mass of the people. It was composed of men of business, who were not 
 professional politicians and who generally were known to be men of char 
 acter, intelligence, and moderation in their views. To many of them, the 
 acceptance of such a place was well known to be a sacrifice. To myself 
 it was a serious one, which only a sense of duty as a citizen prevented me 
 from refusing to encounter. Of the delegation, the majority had been 
 prominent members of the old Whig party some ot them, at one time, 
 active members of the American party. I believe that we should have 
 been fairly and easily elected, by an overwhelming majority, over any op 
 position that might have been presented ; and I know that if there had 
 been any opposition, it would have found the ballot-box as free as we found 
 it, and would have been fairly dealt with, by the Police authorities and 
 ourselves. If you really believe that we never represented more than 
 nine thousand voters out of thirty thousand in the city ; that the rest of 
 the State was of " distinguished loyalty ;" that our support grew smaller 
 and smaller, from day to day, afterwards, and that we were actually fright 
 ened from our intention of adopting measures of treason, by the " threat 
 of expulsion " on the part of the " loyal people " of the town of Freder 
 ick to say nothing of the " menace of resistance" from Baltimore I 
 should be pleased to know in what consisted the danger which Mr. Lin 
 coln, or any one else, had a right to apprehend from us. What pretext 
 or excuse had he for arresting us, when in addition to this local security 
 and our " entire insignificance," he had armed possession of the whole 
 State, and had the Governor to aid him in disarming its inhabitants? 
 
 You entirely misapprehend you certainly misrepresent the state of 
 things in Baltimore on and immediately after the 19th of April, 1861. It 
 was a reign of comparative unanimity in feeling and opinion not a reign 
 of terror. The facts have been concealed from you, or distorted, or falsi 
 fied, to answer the purposes of your informants. When I made the speech 
 to the people, on the 19th, of which you have quoted an absurd and false 
 report, I was conducted nay, almost forced to the stand, by one of the 
 most prominently "loyal" gentlemen of Baltimore immaculately "loyal," 
 now as then who not only applauded what I said, to the echo, but con 
 gratulated me upon having said it, when I had finished. It was but a few 
 days afterwards, that he invited me to join a company he was organizing, 
 to support the authorities ! My poor remarks, on the occasion referred to, 
 
27 
 
 were received with tremendous cheering, by crowds of citizens " Union 
 men" then and theretofore many of whom are so desperately " loyal" even 
 now, that you may count on their support to the Administration and the 
 war, to the overthrow of every vestige of the Constitution, except the 
 clause which secures " the obligation of contracts." I have had recent ac 
 cess to an autograph subscription-list containing the signatures of many 
 leading mercantile houses of the most unconditional and uncompromising 
 " loyalty," and now in the very bosom of the true faith, with yourself 
 wherein they attested the sincerity of their respect for the motives and pur 
 poses of the authorities, on the 19th of April, by subscribing amounts, set 
 opposite to their names, for the purpose of purchasing arms, to be used un 
 der the direction of the Board of Police. I dare say the list will be given 
 to the public, before long. It was probably with these arms for there 
 were scarcely any others that the Baltimore American, since and now the 
 organ of the Government here, and certainly the very glass and mould of 
 " loyalty" among us, suggested on the 20th of April, that the Northern 
 troops should be met " beyond the limits of the city" a suggestion how 
 ever which the Police authorities did not see fit to adopt. It was only the 
 day before, that the same patriotic journal, in its afternoon issue, had said 
 in words similar to those which you ascribe to me on that point and 
 which, with some unimportant modification of language, I did certainly 
 use that " the blood of our citizens, shed in our streets, is an irresistible 
 appeal to us all to unite as Marylanders." The appropriation of half a 
 million by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, which you denounce 
 the Legislature for having ratified, was, at once and spontaneously, made 
 effective by a voluntary tender of the whole amount, as a loan, on the part 
 of the banks, on the very day of the adoption of the city ordinance. I 
 was present at the Mayor s office on that day, when a committee of bank 
 officers, as " loyal" as yourself or General Butler, made tender of the 
 money to his Honor, and I well remember the jubilant satisfaction which 
 the chairman expressed at having been authorized to do so. Nothing, I 
 am sure, would be more difficult than for you to convince all the worthy 
 gentlemen to whom I have alluded, that they did what would have justi 
 fied the President in sending them to Fort Warren, instead of taking coun 
 sel with them and theirs, as he has done, to suppress the " disloyal ele 
 ment." You, doubtless, remember the fine specimen of elegiac composi 
 tion which issued from Fort McHenry, when the proprietor of the Ameri 
 can was torn from his " sorrowing wife and daughters" and shut up " in a 
 depot of traitors" for a day or two, because of his precipitate attempt to 
 sell an account of the " grand strategic movement" to Harrison s Land 
 ing ! 
 
 I could give you a host of other examples, to illustrate the public una 
 nimity which I have described as existing. They will not be hidden much 
 longer under a bushel, I imagine but I presume you will be satisfied with 
 a single additional one. Indeed, I do not see how, in examining the re 
 port of the proceedings in Monument Square, on the 19th of April, you 
 could have been withdrawn, by the observations ascribed to so humble an 
 individual as myself, from the speech of your present colleague, then his 
 Excellency, Governor Hicks, upon the same occasion. If you had taken 
 the trouble, you would have learned how that " loyal " citizen and officer 
 than and there declared that " he had had three conferences with the Mayor, 
 and they had agreed upon every point presented " and further that " he 
 
28 
 
 was a Marylander and would sooner have his right arm cut off than raise 
 it against a sister Southern State /" I am sure you must have seen, from 
 your obvious familiarity with the proceedings of the Legislature, how in 
 his opening message, a few days after, the Governor showed, by his cor 
 respondence, that he had remonstrated against the sending of any more 
 troops through Maryland, and had protested to General Butler against the 
 landing, at Annapolis, of the division commanded by that person. If this, 
 and what I have said before, be not sufficient to satisfy you that every 
 body ought not to be hanged, who was naturally and painfully excited by 
 the shedding of the blood of our people in our streets and by the barbar 
 ous threats of Northern presses and mobs, and who desired to avert the 
 shedding of more blood let it at all events furnish you with a test of Mr. 
 Lincoln s impartiality in the use of his supreme prerogatives. Consider 
 Governor Hicks, I pray you, as a Senator of the United States, with his 
 right arm as yet unamputated, and Mr. Brown and myself who vowed 
 no limbs to the surgeon as prisoners just released from Fort Warren, 
 after fourteen months of ruthless captivity ! 
 
 Four charge that the members of the Legislature were only deterred by 
 fear or menace of popular violence from adopting such measures as they 
 deemed expedient, is as untrue as the charge already refuted, that the elec 
 tion of the Baltimore delegation was the result of illegal pressure upon 
 the voters. I am quite sure that no definite threats of popular outrage 
 ever reached the Legislature to my knowledge ; and certainly no one at 
 tached any importance to them, if they were made. There was some fool 
 ish talk, among a few excitable people at Frederick, which I have no doubt 
 there were knaves enough to encourage; but I know that it was only 
 laughed at, and the parties who were guilty of it knew better than to carry 
 it beyond the swagger of the bar-rooms. The " Force Bill," as you call 
 it, was not passed, simply because it was both inexpedient and at variance 
 with the Constitution of the State, in the judgment of the large majority 
 of the members of the Legislature, who were opposed to it. If we had 
 deemed it otherwise, we should not have hesitated or feared to pass it; but 
 although it went to a second reading in the Senate, the opposition to 
 it on the part of the members of the House became so decided, as soon as 
 its provisions were generally canvassed, that it was recommitted in the Sen 
 ate, and died in committee. I never knew of the existence of the bill, or 
 of the purpose to introduce it, until after it was printed and had passed to 
 the second reading ; and I do not believe that more than one or two mem 
 bers, at farthest, of the Baltimore delegation were better informed. I know 
 that we were unanimously opposed to it, as soon as we knew what it was. 
 
 So much for the measures which we did not pass, and which you seem 
 to consider as justifying our arrest, quite as decidedly as those which we 
 adopted. For these last I have no apology or explanation to make, to you 
 or to any one. I have reviewed them, carefully and calmly, and am 
 ready to stand by them all. Of the position which they gave to the 
 State, upon the great questions which have severed the Union, I am proud, 
 as in my last letter I said to you. The sad experiences of the interme 
 diate time have given them a sanction and a confirmation, which no candid 
 or rational man can dispute* Those measures constitute the whole of 
 what, as a Legislature, we did, or thought it proper and practicable, and 
 within our legitimate sphere, to do ; and the frank and explicit manner in 
 which our conclusions in regard to the war, its causes, conduct and con- 
 
sequences, were promulgated and officially communicated to the Govern 
 ment even after the armed forces of the United States had full posses 
 sion of the State, and the President had disregarded the habeas corpus, 
 and had arrested and imprisoned the Police authorities of its chief city 
 would have satisfied a fairer man than yourself, that it was a libel to charge 
 us with "conspiring," or with being intimidated from the execution of 
 purposes which we entertained. With these measures and the recorded 
 opinions of the Legislature before the world, I could not falsify, if I 
 would, the position which we occupied. Nor can you. We believed 
 the war to be unjust and unconstitutional brought about by the aggres 
 sions of the Northern people upon the rights of the South, and portend 
 ing a military despotism to both sections. We believed the restoration 
 of the Union, by force of arms, to be a cruel absurdity and impossi 
 bility, and we desired and implored the Government of the United States 
 to give us peace, upon the only terms on which we believed it to be possi 
 ble the recognition of Southern indepencence. In a quarrel in which we 
 believed the South to have the right on its side, our sympathies were, of 
 course, with the South, and they were strengthened by habits, ties, asso 
 ciations, and commo* institutions and interests. We were satisfied that 
 the troops which were passing through the State to Washington and 
 which Mr. Lincoln, in my hearing and that of his Cabinet, on the 21st of 
 April, 1861, solemnly declared to be intended only for "the defence of 
 the Capital," and not for invasion were meant to subjugate the Southern 
 States. We believed that they were destined, sooner or later, to be the 
 bearers of an Emancipation Proclamation, and to stir up servile insurrec 
 tion. We regarded them, therefore, as Governor Hicks had styled them, 
 in his letter to General Butler, as "Northern troops" on an unlawful, 
 sectional and unconstitutional errand, to which the pretence of " restoring 
 the Union" gave no sanction in our eyes. We believed the people of the 
 State of Maryland, in the event of the dissolution of the Union, to have 
 the right of determining to which of the two sections their feelings and 
 interests inclined them, and we had no doubt that, upon that naked ques 
 tion, three-fourths of them, at least, would seek to join their destinies with 
 those of the South. These opinions we had the unquestioned right to en 
 tertain and to express, and we did so. You will find them all openly pro 
 claimed in the reports and resolutions which the Legislature adopted. 
 They are my deliberate opinions, still, and I know of no change, in regard 
 to them, among my colleagues. But though they were our opinions, 
 we knew and felt that we were not the people of Maryland, and that 
 we had no right, as a mere legislative body, to pass an ordinance of seces 
 sion, or to revolutionize the State, or to alter its government, or to plunge 
 it into war, of our own motion. These things were for the people them 
 selves to determine on, and to do or to leave undone ; and I solemnly as 
 severate that it never entered into the plans or purposes or contemplation 
 of the Legislature, to substitute itself for the people, in these regards, or 
 to " conspire" to do so. We should undoubtedly have placed our people 
 in a condition to defend themselves and the State against lawless aggres 
 sion from the General Government, if we had been able to do it This was 
 our duty, and it was the constitutional right of the people, and subsequent 
 sufferings and wrongs have demonstrated its paramount necessity. If we 
 could, we should, beyond all peradventure, have prevented the suppression 
 of the municipal government of Baltimore and the General Assembly of 
 
30 
 
 the State, and the substitution of a military commandant, and his will, for 
 the laws and Constitution of Maryland. We should never have permitted 
 the illegal arrests, the searches and seizures without oath or warrant, 
 which have trodden out the fundamental guaranties of freedom among us 
 We should not have tolerated the suspension of the habeas corpus at Mr. 
 Lincoln s pleasure, or the suppression of newspapers and free speech, or 
 have allowed a Judge to be dragged, bleeding, from the Bench, as in the 
 case of Judge Carmichael, because he had given the provisions of the Con 
 stitution, securing the liberty of the citizen, in charge to a grand jury. 
 Least of all would we ever have consented that an " election" should be 
 held and directed and consumated in Maryland, under the proclamation of 
 a General of the United States army. Of all this you may rest assured. 
 
 Unhappily, however, we were powerless, and we knew and felt it. The 
 people were unarmed and defenceless. The Governor of the State was a 
 reckless partisan, who subordinated his duties to his passions, and had no 
 greater respect for his State or himself, than to permit one of his official 
 proclamations to be contemptuously "countermanded," through the news 
 papers, by a recruiting captain of United States volunteers in Baltimore. 
 We could have nothing to hope from such an Execute his* "right arm" 
 to the contrary notwithstanding. Being less unscrupulous than he, we 
 would not invade his constitutional province, and without doing so we 
 could do nothing that required Executive co-operation. For even the pro 
 tection of our people, therefore, the execution of our laws, and the pas 
 sive maintenance of the dignity and constitutional rights of our State, 
 we were helpless. How absurd to contemplate us as in an aggressive and 
 belligerent attitude towards the Government and armies of the United 
 States ! Your grave attempt to set up the doctrine that our mere legis 
 lative proceedings laws passed and resolutions adopted by us, as a State 
 Legislature were "overt acts" of treason, under a ruling of Chief Jus 
 tice Marshall s, will not deceive any one who has access to the horn-book 
 of our common profession. If our resolutions were foolish or wicked, as 
 you would have it they were still merely the expression of opinions. If 
 our laws were unconstitutional, they were simply void, and the peril was 
 to those only who might happen to act under them. You have aided in 
 passing too many unconstitutional laws, yourself, for any one to doubt, who 
 has observed your public career, that you are altogether aware of your im 
 punity, as a legislator, in doing so. 
 
 I believe I have answered whatever it is proper I should answer in your 
 letter. I have done so, necessarily at great length and with much incon 
 venience to myself, in view of my health and occupations. I have only 
 answered you at all, because 1 felt that you had taken an unfair advantage 
 of my previous letter, and I did not choose you should do so unnoticed. 
 The cold blooded and unmanly comment which you make on my reference 
 to the indignities and indecencies of our treatment, as prisoners, would 
 have deprived you of any right to a reply, as a matter of respect to you. 
 If it were possible that the Confederate Government had in fact dealt as 
 brutally with prisoners, as we were, at times, treated, it would have seemed 
 small reason why you should select such brutality as the only point for 
 imitation. You are a better: judge, however, than I am, of the views of 
 your political associates, and I, therefore, presume you speak advisedly, 
 when you indicate that the Administration revenges upon kidnapped and 
 helpless citizens of the United States who have nothing to rely on but 
 
31 
 
 its sense of justice and humanity the wrongs which it professes to have 
 received from enemies in arms. 
 
 I am, Sir, you obedient servant, 
 
 S. T. WALLTS. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 I RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 3Aui 6540 
 
 WOnf EC J? t tJ""* 1 
 
 
 REC D LD 
 
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 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 1 AUG 28 1967 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LD 21A 40m 4 63 General Library 
 
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT