State in the name of her people does hereby protest against the same and against the arbitrary restrictions and illegalities with which it is attended, calling upon all good citizens at the same time, in the most earnest and authoritative manner, to abstain from all violent and unlawful interference of every sort with the troops in transit through our territory, or quartered among us, and patiently and peacefully leave to time and reason the ultimate and certain reestablishment and vindication of the right.
Resolved, That under existing circumstances it is inexpedient to call a Sovereign Convention of the State at this time, or to take any measures for the immediate organization or arming of the militia.
These resolutions passed the Senate, ayes 11, nays 3; House, ayes 43, nays 12. General Butler replied to this defiance by seizing Baltimore the very night these resolutions passed. He acted, they resolved! An equally significant incident had occurred in Baltimore just the week before. Judge William F. Giles, judge of the district court of the United States for the district of Maryland, issued the writ of habeas corpus on May 4th to Major Morris, commanding at Fort McHenry, commanding him to produce before the court without delay the body of John George Mullen, an enlisted soldier, one of the garrison of the fort who sought his discharge on the ground of minority. Under the law of the United States it was unlawful to enlist a minor under eighteen years of age in the military or naval service without the consent of his parent or guardian. Mullen alleged in his petition that he was under the lawful age and had been enlisted illegally. Major Morris neither produced the man nor made any response to the mandate of the writ; but on May 7th he addressed a letter to Judge Giles, in which he peremptorily refused to obey the writ. In this first trial of strength between law and arms, law became silent, as usual. On May 25th John Merryman, one of the first citizens of Baltimore county, was arrested at his home by a squad of soldiers and locked up in Fort McHenry. The next day Roger Brooke Taney, chief justice of the Supreme court of the United States, assigned to the fourth circuit, of which Maryland formed a part, issued the writ of habeas corpus to General Cadwallader, commanding at Fort McHenry, requiring him to produce the body of Merryman before the circuit court of the United States for the district of Maryland, at Baltimore, on Monday, May 27th. The chief justice issued the writ on Sunday! On Monday Colonel Lee, aide-de-camp to General Cadwallader, appeared in the court and said that General Cadwallader's other engagements prevented his appearing in person, but had sent him to express the general's regrets and read the chief justice a letter, which the aide proceeded to do. The general said that Merryman had been arrested for open and avowed hostility to the United States, and that he had been authorized by the President of the United States to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in such cases, which he had done. The chief justice ordered an attachment to issue against General Cadwallader and sent the marshal of the court to arrest the general and bring him before the Court. Upon the marshal's proceeding to Fort McHenry with a few deputy marshals he sent in his card and official designation through the sentry at the gate to the commanding officer. After a reasonable time the messenger came back with the message that there was no answer to the marshal's card and that he would not be permitted to enter the fort. The marshal made return of these facts to the court, and the chief justice directed the clerk to make an entry on the record of the court that the writ of habeas corpus having been disobeyed by General Cadwallader, an attachment for contempt had issued against him, which he had resisted, having a superior force at his command to any which the court or its marshal could control, and he subsequently filed his opinion in the case, in which he demonstrated beyond a cavil that the President of the United States has and can have no authority at any time, under any circumstances, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and directed the entire record to be certified to the President of the United States for his information and action.
On the 14th of May the legislature adjourned, and Ross Winans, a member of the house of delegates from Baltimore City—the head of the firm of Ross Winans & Co., the greatest manufacturers of locomotive engines and railroad cars in the world—was arrested by General Butler at the Relay House on his way home. Ross Winans was not only a man of great wealth, one of the millionaires of the day, but he was a man whose moral character, whose genius, whose breadth of mind and greatness of heart, whose culture and whose courage would have made him distinguished in any country in the world. His arrest was intended to terrorize the State. It had the effect of rousing it like the long roll. The legislature, at its adjourned session of June 22nd, declared that
The unconstitutional and arbitrary proceedings of the Federal executive have not been confined to the violation of the personal rights and liberties of the citizens of Maryland, but have been extended into every department of oppressive illegality, so that the property of no man is safe, the sanctity of no dwelling is respected, and the sacredness of private correspondence no longer exists; and,—
Whereas, the Senate and House of Delegates of Maryland, recognizing the obligations of the State, as far as in her lies, to protect and defend her people against usurped and arbitrary power, however difficult the fulfillment of that high obligation may be rendered by disastrous circumstances, feel it due to her dignity and independence that history should not record the overthrow of public freedom, for an instant, within her borders, without recording likewise the indignant expression of her resentment and remonstrance;
Now, therefore, be it resolved, That the senate and house of delegates of Maryland, in the name and on behalf of the good people of the State, do accordingly register this their earnest and unqualified protest against the oppressive and tyrannical assertion and exercise of military jurisdiction within the limits of Maryland, over the persons and property of her citizens, by the government of the United States, and do solemnly declare the same to be subversive of the most sacred guarantees of the Constitution and in flagrant violation of the fundamental and most cherished principles of American free government.
The legislature of Maryland was composed of brave, high-minded and patriotic men, but it was dominated by the spirit of conservatism, which cannot understand how anything can be right which is unlawful, nor any process expedient or necessary which is illegal. The conservatives never could, never did understand that they were in the midst of a revolution. They stood by constitutional rights. They held on to the claim of constitutional guarantees—to habeas corpus—to trial by jury—to free speech—to law—until they and their constitutional guarantees were landed in Fort Lafayette or the military prisons in New York and Boston. They stood by their faith then and never ceased to protest that they could not be imprisoned without warrant, nor held without bail. They were right in doctrine, but they were imprisoned and held.
The minority party in the State, the party of action in the legislature, never hoped for the secession of the State after the delay of Virginia. After the 24th of May Maryland was a Federal garrison. But they did hope for action—a league offensive and defensive with Virginia, with all that that implied. They introduced into the legislature a bill to provide for a committee of safety to be elected by the legislature, to which should be committed the duty of defending the State and her people and to exercise all the powers of government. The bill appropriated $5,000,000 to be applied by the committee of safety for the defense of the State. The banks in Baltimore had raised $500,000 for the defense of the city in three hours, and the banks of the State would have supplied $5,000,000 for the defense of the State in a week. The plan of the projectors of the committee of safety was to arm the militia. They expected to equip forty thousand men as promptly as the Northern States had armed and equipped their volunteers, and they knew that Maryland volunteers would take arms as quickly as those of Massachusetts and Ohio. They did not propose to carry the State out of the Union, but they intended to arm their young men and command the peace in the State. When that failed, as fail they knew it would, the State would be represented by forty thousand armed and equipped volunteers who would carry her flag in the front line and would make her one of the Confederate States in fact, if not in name.
These were the intentions of Captain Johnson and men of his age in the legislature and in the State, and they were constant and ardent in pressing them in the general assembly. The Conservatives, however, preferred the processes of the law, and could not understand how force could decide questions of right. It would be better to bring trespass quare clausum against Butler at the Relay for digging trenches and piling up earthworks, to sue out injunctions against illegal arrests and a mandamus to make Cadwallader respect Taney's writ of habeas corpus!
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