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

by George William Brown

A striking commentary on these reasons was furnished on the 11th of December, 1863, by a decision of the Court of Appeals of Maryland in the case of the Mayor, etc., of Baltimore vs. Charles Howard and others, reported in 20th Maryland Rep., p. 335. The question was whether the interference by the Government of the United States with the Board of Police and police force established by law in the city of Baltimore was without authority of law and did in any manner affect or impair the rights or invalidate the acts of the board. The court held that, though the board was displaced by a force to which they yielded and could not resist, their power and rights under their organization were still preserved, and that they were amenable for any dereliction of official duty, except in so far as they were excused by uncontrollable events. And the court decided that Mr. Hinks, one of the police commissioners, whose case was alone before the court, was entitled to his salary, which had accrued after the board was so displaced.

Subsequently, after the close of the war, the Legislature of the State passed an act for the payment of all arrearages due to the men of the police subsequent to their displacement by the Government of the United States and until their discharge by the Government of the State.

It will be perceived that General Dix delayed replying to my letter of the 5th of September until the 9th; that his reply was not left at the mayor's office until the tenth, and that in the meantime, on the afternoon of the 9th, after waiting for his reply for four days, I paid the arrears due the police, as I had good reason to suppose he intended I should.

A friend of mine, a lawyer of Baltimore, and a pronounced Union man, has, since then, informed me that General Dix showed him my letter of the 5th before my arrest; that my friend asked him whether he had replied to it, and the General replied he had not. My friend answered that he thought a reply was due to me. From all this it does not seem uncharitable to believe that the purpose of General Dix was to put me in the false position of appearing to disobey his order and thus to furnish an excuse for my imprisonment. This lasted until the 27th of November, 1862, a short time after my term of office had expired, when there was a sudden and unexpected release of all the State prisoners in Fort Warren, where we were then confined.

On the 26th of November, 1862, Colonel Justin Dimick, commanding at Fort Warren, received the following telegraphic order from the Adjutant-General's Office, Washington: "The Secretary of War directs that you release all the Maryland State prisoners, also any other State prisoners that may be in your custody, and report to this office."

In pursuance of this order, Colonel Dimick on the following day released from Fort Warren the following State prisoners, without imposing any condition upon them whatever: Severn Teackle Wallis, Henry M. Warfield, William G. Harrison, T. Parkin Scott, ex-members of the Maryland Legislature from Baltimore; George William Brown, ex-Mayor of Baltimore; Charles Howard and William H. Gatchell, ex-Police Commissioners; George P. Kane, ex-Marshal of Police; Frank Key Howard, one of the editors of the Baltimore Exchange; Thomas W. Hall, editor of the Baltimore South; Robert Hull, merchant, of Baltimore; Dr. Charles Macgill, of Hagerstown; William H. Winder, of Philadelphia; and B. L. Cutter, of Massachusetts.

General Wool, then in command in Baltimore, issued an order declaring that thereafter no person should be arrested within the limits of the Department except by his order, and in all such cases the charges against the accused party were to be sworn to before a justice of the peace.

As it was intimated that these gentlemen had entered into some engagement as the condition of their release, Mr. Wallis, while in New York on his return home, took occasion to address a letter on the subject to the editor of the New York World, in which he said: "No condition whatever was sought to be imposed, and none would have been accepted, as the Secretary of War well knew. Speaking of my fellow-prisoners from Maryland, I have a right to say that they maintained to the last the principle which they asserted from the first—namely, that, if charged with crime, they were entitled to be charged, held and tried in due form of law and not otherwise; and that, in the absence of lawful accusation and process, it was their right to be discharged without terms or conditions of any sort, and they would submit to none."

Many of our fellow-prisoners were from necessity not able to take this stand. There were no charges against them, but there were imperative duties which required their presence at home, and when the Government at Washington adopted the policy of offering liberty to those who would consent to take an oath of allegiance prepared for the occasion, they had been compelled to accept it.

Before this, in December, 1861, the Government at Washington, on application of friends, had granted me a parole for thirty days, that I might attend to some important private business, and for that time I stayed with kind relatives, under the terms of the parole, in Boston.