This farcical attempt had scarcely ended when a force of mounted volunteers rode rapidly into town. Judge Lander, hearing of their approach, hastily adjourned court, and took refuge in the office of Elwood Evans, the acting clerk of court, a wooden building of two rooms, situated on the east side of Main Street, between Fourth and Fifth streets. To this, a few minutes later, came Captain Bluford Miller with a file of men, and demanded admittance. Finding the door locked, he remarked, “I’ll add a new letter to the alphabet: let her rip,” and kicked in the door with his heavy boots. Entering, he found the judge and Evans in the rear room, and arrested them. Mr. Evans was immediately released, and Judge Lander was taken to Camp Montgomery, where he was held in honorable custody until the war on the Sound was practically over, when he was set at liberty.
Immediately on the departure of the volunteers with their judicial prisoner, an attempt was made to hold a public meeting to protest against the governor’s action. Evans and Kendall were the chief movers and speakers, and harangued a small crowd on Main Street, in front of the governor’s dwelling and office. Mrs. Stevens, with her little girls, happened to be sitting in the front doorway as they approached, and refused to withdraw; but her presence did not deter nor mollify the speeches. Despite the would-be indignation of the promoters, the whole proceeding fell flat, for nearly every one approved the governor’s course, and only a mere handful took part in the demonstration. At length, having emptied the vials of their wrath, one of the speakers moved to adjourn in order to spare the feelings of Mrs. Stevens, who had sat apparently unmoved through it all, and the assemblage dispersed.
A mass meeting, one of the largest ever convened in Olympia, was held at the blockhouse on the public square, Judge B.F. Yantis presiding, and J.W. Goodell, secretary, and the course of Governor Stevens in the matter of martial law was emphatically indorsed, with but twelve dissenting votes. Memorials strongly defending his action were almost unanimously signed by the volunteers, and sent to the Oregon and Washington delegates in Congress. Both Judge Lander and Judge Chenoweth, in their reports to the Secretary of State, complaining of the governor for enforcing martial law, admit that the people indorsed his course, and that the marshals or sheriffs were powerless to resist his orders.
The two prisoners, Wren and McLeod, were tried by military commission on the charge of giving aid and comfort to the enemy; but owing to lack of evidence and the end of the war, they were not convicted, and were finally set at liberty.
Martial law was revoked by proclamation on May 24. Judge Lander held his court at its next regular term in July. In response to notice the governor appeared by counsel, disclaimed any intentional disrespect to the court, but justified his action in proclaiming and enforcing martial law on the ground of imperious public necessity. A fine of fifty dollars for contempt was imposed, which he paid. Anticipating a heavy fine, his friends and admirers were preparing a popular subscription to defray it, but they were not called upon. The judge’s action in imposing a merely nominal fine was taken to be an acknowledgment, in accordance with the opinion of nine tenths of the community, that the governor’s course, if technically illegal, was necessary and right. No action was taken against the volunteers who broke up the courts, or the citizens who turned the marshal and his posse into the street. In his communications to the government in defense of his course in proclaiming martial law, Governor Stevens advanced almost identically the same reasons and arguments that were afterwards adduced by President Lincoln to justify his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
By a letter of the Secretary of State, dated September 12, Governor Stevens was informed that the President, while having no doubt of the purity of his motives, disapproved his action in proclaiming martial law. THE CASE OF COMPANY A.
The chief punishment by which the governor maintained such excellent discipline among the volunteers was that of dishonorable dismissal from the service, which carried with it the loss of pay. This was inflexibly enforced in flagrant cases of disobedience or misconduct, and, being regarded as a disgraceful stigma, was found sufficient. The good conduct and discipline of the volunteers was doubtless promoted by the incessant activity and labor to which they were put; but they were due still more to the superior intelligence and character of the settlers who turned out en masse in defense of their hearthstones, and carried on the war with such patriotic zeal.
In one case, however, the governor felt constrained to dismiss a whole company, an act afterwards made the pretext for much political denunciation and censure. It will be remembered that almost the first act of the governor, in the prosecution of the war, was to disband all local and home guards, and to enlist volunteers for general defense, to serve wherever and whenever ordered. On February 1 he directed Judge Lander to disband a company he had raised in Seattle for home defense, and to enlist there a company for six months, subject to the orders of the executive, in conformity with the proclamation calling out volunteers. “Every man,” wrote the governor to Lander, “who enlists, must do so with the understanding that he enlists for the general defense of the Territory, and that he must move to any point where his services, in the opinion of his commanding officer, are most needed.”
Under these instructions Lander disbanded his first company and raised another, Company A, which garrisoned Seattle for a time, and then built and occupied a post on the Duwhamish River, a few miles above Seattle, and rendered good service in scouting that vicinity and Lake Washington. It was this post and command that Lander abandoned in order to hold Judge Chenoweth’s court, with such mortifying results to himself.
On June 9 Lieutenant A.A. Denny, who succeeded to the command of Company A on Lander’s abandonment of it, was ordered to detail an officer and eight men to hold the post, and to move with his company to Fort Hays, on Connell’s prairie, thence to assist in cutting a road to Snoqualmie Falls. On his representation that a greater force was needed for the protection of the citizens in his vicinity than was designated, he was directed to leave twenty men at the post, and to send the remainder of his company by canoe to Steilacoom, thence to march to Camp Montgomery, where he would receive supplies. He was informed that—