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446

BUTLER'S DESCENT UPON BALTIMORE.

timore on the 19th of April, that his regiment should again march through that city, and now it was invited to that duty.

Toward the evening of the 13th, the entire Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, and a part of the New York Eighth, with the Boston Light Artillerymen and two field-pieces-about one thousand men in all-and horses belonging to the General and his staff, were on a train of cars headed toward Harper's Ferry. Before this train was a short one, bearing fifty men, who were ordered up to Frederick to arrest Winans. When these trains moved up along the margin of the Patapsco Valley, a spy of the Baltimore conspirators started for that city with two fast trotting horses, to carry the important information. The trains moved slowly for about two miles, and then backed as slowly to the Relay House, and past it, and at twilight had backed to the Camden Street Station in Baltimore. Intensely black clouds in the van of an approaching thunder-storm were brooding over the city, threatening a

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fierce tempest, and few persons were abroad, or aware of this portentous arrival. The Mayor was informed of it in the course of the evening, and at once wrote a note to General Butler, saying that the sudden arrival of a large body of troops would create much surprise, and he would like to know whether the General intended to remain at the station, that the police might be notified, and take proper precautions for preserving the peace. Butler and his troops had disappeared in the gloom when the messenger with this note arrived at the Station; but the inquiry was fully answered, to the astonishment of the whole city, loyal and disloyal, early the next morning, by a proclamation from the General in the columns of the faithful Clipper, dated "Federal Hill, Baltimore, May 14, 1861," in which it was announced that a detachment under his command occupied the city, "for the purpose, among other things, of enforcing respect and obedience to the laws, as well of the

fifteen millions of dollars. It was reported that he contributed largely in aid of the revolutionists; and that, among other things for their use, he manufactured five thousand pikes in his iron-works. He was arrested on a charge of treason, but the lenient Government released him.

1 This is a view of Federal Hill before General Butler occupied it. It was so named, because, upon its summit, there was a grand celebration in honor of the final ratification of the "Federal" or National Constitution, in 1788. It overlooks the harbor; and upon it was a telegraphic station, the old-fashioned semaphorie apparatus being used. It is seen toward the left of the picture.

MILITARY OCCUPATION OF FEDERAL IIILL.

447 State, if requested thereto by the civil authorities, as of the United States laws, which are being violated within its limits by some malignant and traitorous men; and in order to testify the acceptance by the Federal Government of the fact, that the city and all the well-intentioned portion of its inhabitants are loyal to the Union and the Constitution, and are to be so regarded and treated by all."

How came Butler and his men on Federal Hill? was a question upon thousands of lips on that eventful morning. They had moved stealthily from the station in the gloom, at half-past seven in the evening, piloted by Colonel Robert Hare, of Ellicott's Mills, and Captain McConnell, through Lee, Hanover, Montgomery, and Light Streets, to the foot of Federal Hill. The night was intensely dark, made so by the impending storm. The flashes of lightning and peals of thunder were terrific, but the rain was withheld until they had nearly reached their destination. Then it came like a flood, just as they commenced the ascent of the declivity. "The spectacle was grand," said the General to the writer, while

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of flame, and the burnished brass cannon like sheets of fire."

Officers and men were thoroughly drenched, and on the summit of the hill they found very little shelter. A house of refreshment, with a long upper and lower piazza, kept by a German, was taken possession of and made the General's head-quarters; and there, dripping with the rain, he sat down and wrote his proclamation, which appeared in the morning. His men had procured wood when the storm ceased, lighted fires, and were making themselves comfortable. At eight o'clock, long after his proclamation had been scattered over the town, he received the Mayor's message of the previous evening. Important events had transpired since it was written, twelve hours before. The Massachusetts Sixth had again marched through Baltimore, not, as before, the objects of assault by a brutal mob, but as a potential force, to hold that mob and all others in subserviency to law and order, and welcomed as deliverers by thousands of loyal citizens.

So confident was General Butler in the moral and physical strength of his position, and of the salutary influence of his proclamation, in which he promised security to the peaceful and true, punishment to the turbulent and false, and justice to all, that he rode through the city with his staff on the day after his arrival, dined leisurely at the Gillmore House, and had conferences with friends. In that proclamation he forbade transportation of supplies to the insurgents; asked for commissary stores, at fair prices, to the amount of forty thousand rations, and also clothing; forbade all assemblages of irregular military organizations; directed State military officers to report

448

BUTLER RECALLED FROM BALTIMORE.

to him; offered aid to the corporate authorities of Baltimore, in the due administration of law; forbade the display of any secession flags or banners; and assured the people that he had such confidence in their loyalty that of the many thousands of troops which he might immediately concentrate there, he had come with scarcely more than a guard. He made some important seizures of materials of war intended for the insurgents; cast Ross Winans into Fort McHenry, in accordance with orders from Washington, and was preparing to try him by court-martial for his alleged crimes, when a letter, bearing a sting of reproof, came from General Scott, saying:-"Your hazardous occupation of Baltimore was made without my knowledge, and, of course, without my approbation. It is a God-send that it was without a conflict of arms. It is also reported that you have sent a detachment to Frederick, but this is impossible. Not a word have I heard from you as to either movement. Let me hear from you."

The operations of a night with a thousand men and a ready pen had made a future campaign with twelve thousand men, which the General-in-chief had planned, unnecessary. The Lieutenant-General thought that the Brigadier had used too daringly the "absolute" power accorded to a "commander of a department," unless "restricted by specific orders or military law," and overlooking, for the moment, the immense advantages gained for the Government by such exercise of power, he insisted upon the recall of General Butler from Baltimore. It was done. Viewed in the light of to-day, that recall appears like an almost fatal mistake.

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"I always said," wrote Mr. Cameron, then Secretary of War, from St. Petersburg, many months afterward, "that if you

CHESAPEAKE BAL

THE DEPARTMENT OF ANNAPOLIS.

had been left in Baltimore, the rebellion would have been of short duration."

There was no rebuke in President Lincoln's recall of General Butler

1 General Butler ascertained that a large quantity of arms, in charge of the city authorities, were stored in a warehouse on the corner of Gay and Second Streets, and he sent Colonel Hare, with thirty-five soldiers, to demand their surrender into his custody. This force reached the warehouse at about four o'clock in the afternoon, where three policemen were found in charge. Hare demanded the surrender of the building and its contents, in the name of the National Government. The policemen refused compliance, until they should receive orders to that effect from Marshal Kane, to whom word was immediately sent. A large crowd rapidly collected at the spot, but were quiet. Kane soon appeared, with a deputy marshal and several policemen, when Hare, in the name of General Butler, repeated the demand for a surrender. Kane replied that he could not do so without the sanction of the Police Commissioners. In the mean time, Commissioner J. W. Davis had arrived, and, after consultation, he hastened to the office of the Board of Police, when that body determined to surrender the arms under protest, and they did so. The doors of the warehouse were then opened, and thirty-five drays and furniture wagons were employed in carrying away the arms. They were in boxes, ready for shipment to the insurgents in Virginia or elsewhere, and consisted of two thousand two hundred muskets, and four thousand and twenty pikes or spears, manufactured by Winans. While the vehicles were a-loading, the crowd, which had become large, were somewhat agitated by persons who desired a collision, but there was very little disturbance of any kind. The arms were taken to Federal Hill, and from there to Fort McHenry.

2 Parton's General Butler at New Orleans, page 117.

THE PRESIDENT EXERCISES WAR POWERS.

449 from Baltimore, in compliance with the wishes of General Scott. On the contrary, it had the appearance of commendation, for he immediately offered him the commission of a Major-General of Volunteers, and the command of a much more extended military district, including Eastern Virginia and the two Carolinas, with his head-quarters at Fortress Monroe. He was succeeded in command at Baltimore by General Cadwalader, of Philadelphia, and the troops were temporarily withdrawn. Afterward the Fifth New York Regiment (Zouave), Colonel Abraham Duryèe, occupied Federal Hill, and thereon built the strong earthwork known as Fort Federal Hill, whose cannon commanded both the town and Fort McHenry.

The 14th of May was a memorable one in the annals of Maryland, as the time when the tide of secession, which for weeks had been threatening to ingulf it in revolution, was absolutely checked, and the Unionists of the State were placed upon solid vantage-ground, from which they were never driven a line, but were strengthened every hour. On that day General Butler broke the power of the conspirators, by the military occupation of Baltimore and the promulgation of his proclamation, which disarmed treason. On that day the dangerously disloyal Legislature adjourned, and Governor Hicks, relieved of the pressure of rampant treachery around him, and assured by the Secretary of War that Maryland troops would not be ordered out of the State, issued a proclamation calling for the four regiments named in the Secretary's requisition for militia as the quota of that Commonwealth. Thenceforth the tongues of loyal Marylanders were unloosed, and treason became weaker every hour; and their State was soon numbered among the stanchest of loyal Commonwealths, outstripping in practical patriotism Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri. On that eventful 14th of May, the veteran Major W. W. Morris, in command at Fort McHenry, near Baltimore (which had lately been well garrisoned), first gave practical force to the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, which the exigency of the times seemed to give constitutional sanction for. A man claiming to be a soldier of the Maryland State Militia, was imprisoned in Fort McHenry. Judge Giles, of Baltimore, issued a writ of habeas corpus for his release, which Major Morris refused to obey. His letter to the Judge was a spirited protest against the treasonable practices around him, and seemed to be a full justification of his action. "At the date of issuing your writ," he said, "and for two weeks previous, the city in which you live, and where your court has been held, was entirely under the control of revolutionary authorities. Within that period United States soldiers, while committing no offense, had been perfidiously attacked and inhumanly murdered in your streets; no punishment had been awarded, and, I believe, no arrests had been made for these atrocious crimes; supplies of provisions intended for this garrison had been stopped; the intention to cap

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April 19, 1861.

1 The second clause of the ninth section of the first Article of the National Constitution says:-"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

* In the Maryland Legislature, S. T. Wallis moved-"That the measures adopted and conduct pursued by the authorities of the City of Baltimore, on Friday, the 19th of April, and since that time, be, and the same are hereby, made valid by the General Assembly." This would cover the conspirators and their tools, the mob, from punishment. In furtherance of this project for shielding the guilty, T. Parkins Scott proposed, in the same body, a bill to suspend the operations of the criminal laws, and that the Grand Jury should be stopped from finding indictments against any of the offenders.-Baltimore Clipper, June 23, 1961.

VOL. I.-29

450

IMPRISONMENT OF ALLEGED DISLOYALISTS.

ture this fort had been boldly proclaimed; your most public thoroughfares were daily patrolled by large numbers of troops, armed and clothed, at least in part, with articles stolen from the United States; and the Federal flag, while waving over the Federal offices, was cut down by some person wearing the uniform of a Maryland soldier.' To add to the foregoing, an assemblage elected in defiance of law, but claiming to be the legislative body of your State, and so recognized by the Executive of Maryland, was debating the Federal compact. If all this be not rebellion, I know not what to call it. I certainly regard it as sufficient legal cause for suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus." He added:-"If, in an experience of thirtythree years, you have never before known the writ to be disobeyed, it is only because such a contingency in political affairs as the present has never before arisen."

Since the 19th of April, the Government had felt compelled to resort to extraordinary measures for its preservation, and much was done "without due form of law," excepting what the exercise of the war powers of the President might justify. On the day after the massacre at Baltimore, the

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• April, 1861.

VIEW OF FORT M'HENRY.

original dispatches in the telegraph offices in all the principal cities in the Free-labor States, received during a year previously, were, by order of the Government, issued on the 19th," seized by the United States Marshals at the same hour, namely, three o'clock in the afternoon. The object was, to obtain evidence of the complicity of politicians in those States with the conspirators. Every dispatch that seemed to indicate such complicity was sent to Washington, and the Government was furnished with such positive evidence of active sympathy with the insurgents that the offenders became exceedingly cautious and far less mischievous. At about the same time, the necessity for arresting and imprisoning seditious persons in the Free-labor States seemed clear to the apprehension of the Government, and such were made on simply the warrant of the Secretary of State. These offenders were confined in Fort McHenry, at Baltimore; Fort Lafayette, near New York, and Fort Warren, in Boston harbor. Writs of habeas

1 This was also done on Federal Hill, a few days before the arrival of General Butler, by order of Marshal Kane. A bold Union boy, standing near when the work was accomplished, exclaimed:-" Why don't you try your hand on that flag?" pointing to the one floating over Fort Mellenry. The boy saved himself from panishment by the secessionists by superior fleetness of foot.

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