The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 7: Prisons and Hospitals.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

---

[198] prisoners in Forts Lafayette and Warren in the early part of 1862 and recommended the discharge of a considerable number, as no charges whatever had been made against them. These were generally discharged upon taking the oath of allegiance to the United States. Many, however, refused to take the oath, saying that though no charges had been brought against them, such action would be in effect a confession of guilt. For example, Charles Howard; his son, Francis Key Howard, Henry M. Warfield, and other Baltimore prisoners remained in confinement until they were released without conditions, though release on taking an oath had been previously offered.

The policy of arbitrary arrests was extensively employed to crush out secession sentiment in Maryland. The mayor of Baltimore, the chief of police, and the entire board of police commissioners of the city were arrested, not as a result of their action in the Baltimore riots of April 19, 1861, where they seem to have done their best to protect the Sixth Massachusetts regiment, but because their opposition to the passage of further troops through Baltimore was deemed seditious, and their sympathies were supposed to be with the South. Many members of the Maryland legislature were also arrested on and after September 20, 1861, and confined first in Fort McHenry, then in Fort Lafayette, and finally in Fort Warren, in order to forestall the passage of an act of secession. Some of these were soon released after taking the oath of allegiance, but several were confined for months. A number of arrests were also made through the rural counties of Maryland, and out of these grew one of the most interesting cases of the war.

Richard B. Carmichael, a judge of the State court, was a man of courage, devoted to his profession, and almost fanatical in his belief in the supremacy of the law and the strict construction of the Constitution. In 1861, he charged the grand juries of his circuit that these arrests were unlawful and that it was the duty of that body to return indictments against those responsible. His charge, which followed closely the