Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War

by George William Brown

General Banks does not say what authority he had to make decrees, or what the decrees were which the commissioners had refused to obey; and as on the 27th of June he had imprisoned the marshal of police, and had put a provost marshal in his place, retaining only the subordinate officers of the police department, and had appointed instead of the men another body of police, all under the control of the provost marshal; and as the commissioners had no right to discharge the police force established by a law of the State, and were left with no duties in relation to the police which they could perform, it is very plain that, whatever motive General Banks may have had for the arrest and imprisonment of the commissioners, it is not stated in his proclamation.

One of the commissioners, Charles D. Hinks, was soon released in consequence of failing health.

On the day of the arrest of the police commissioners the city was occupied by troops, who in large detachments, infantry and artillery, took up positions in Monument Square, Exchange Place, at Camden-street Station and other points, and they mounted guard and bivouacked in the streets for more than a week.

On July 18th, the police commissioners presented to Congress a memorial in which they protested very vigorously against their unlawful arrest and imprisonment.

On the 23d day of July, 1861, the mayor and city council of Baltimore addressed a memorial to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, in which, after describing the condition of affairs in Baltimore, they respectfully, yet most earnestly, demanded, as matter of right, that their city might be governed according to the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the State of Maryland, that the citizens might be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures; that they should not be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; that the military should render obedience to the civil authority; that the municipal laws should be respected, the officers released from imprisonment and restored to the lawful exercise of their functions, and that the police government established by law should be no longer impeded by armed force to the injury of peace and order. It is perhaps needless to add that the memorial met with no favor.

On the 7th of August, 1861, the Legislature of the State, in a series of resolutions, denounced these proceedings in all their parts, pronouncing them, so far as they affected individuals, a gross and unconstitutional abuse of power which nothing could palliate or excuse, and, in their bearing upon the authority and constitutional powers and privileges of the State herself, a revolutionary subversion of the Federal compact.

The Legislature then adjourned, to meet on the 17th of September.

On the 24th of July, 1861, General Dix had been placed in command of the Department, with his headquarters in Baltimore. On that day he wrote from Fort McHenry to the Assistant Adjutant-General for re-enforcement of the troops under his command. He said that there ought to be ten thousand men at Baltimore and Annapolis, and that he could not venture to respond for the quietude of the Department with a smaller number. At Fort McHenry, as told by his biographer, he exhibited to some ladies of secession proclivities an immense columbiad, and informed them that it was pointed to Monument Square, and if there was an uprising that this piece would be the first he would fire. But the guns of Fort McHenry were not sufficient. He built on the east of the city a very strong work, which he called Fort Marshall, and he strengthened the earthwork on Federal Hill, in the southern part, so that the city lay under the guns of three powerful forts, with several smaller ones. Not satisfied with this, on the 15th of September, 1862, General Dix, after he had been transferred to another department, wrote to Major-General Halleck, then Commander-in-Chief, advising that the ground on which the earthwork on Federal Hill had been erected should be purchased at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars, and that it should be permanently fortified at an additional expense of $250,000. He was of opinion that although the great body of the people were, as he described them, eminently distinguished for their moral virtues, Baltimore had always contained a mass of inflammable material, which would ignite on the slightest provocation. He added that "Fort Federal Hill completely commanded the city, and is capable, from its proximity to the principal business quarters, of assailing any one without injury to the others. The hill seems to have been placed there by Nature as a site for a permanent citadel, and I beg to suggest whether a neglect to appropriate it to its obvious design would not be an unpardonable dereliction of duty."

These views were perhaps extreme even for a major-general commanding in Baltimore, especially as by this time the disorderly element which infests all cities had gone over to the stronger side, and was engaged in the pious work of persecuting rebels. General Halleck, even after this solemn warning, left Federal Hill to the protection of its earthwork.

The opinion which General Dix had of Baltimore extended, though in a less degree, to a large portion of the State, and was shared, in part at least, not only by the other military commanders, but by the Government at Washington.