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.

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[212] says, in 1863, in response to a Congressional resolution: ‘No arrests have been made at any time by any specific order or direction of this department. The persons arrested have been taken either by officers of the army commanding in the field or by provost-marshals exercising authority of a similar nature, and the ground for arrest is, or ought to be, founded upon some necessity, or be justified as a proper precaution against an apparent danger.’

The jealousy of arbitrary power characteristic of the Southerner was shown by the attitude of the Confederate Congress, the governors, and legislatures, which opposed any curtailment of the power of the courts. Though it was evident that a more expeditious method was desirable in certain cases, a resolution authorizing the President to suspend the writ was not passed until February 27, 1862.

This action was limited the following April, and it was provided that the act should expire thirty days after the beginning of the session of the next Congress. The act was renewed on the 13th of October, 1862, and the period was extended until the 12th of February, 1863. The writ was not again suspended until February, 1864, when the Confederate Congress did so in the case of prisoners whose arrest was authorized by the President or the Secretary of War. This act expired on the 2d of August, 1864, and was never reenacted, though President Davis recommended its continuance.

No complete lists of arbitrary arrests in the Confederacy are in existence, and we are able only to find a name here and there in the records. From the excitement caused by the arrests under the act for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, it would appear that they were comparatively few. Some of the governors, as Governor Vance, of North Carolina, and Governor Brown, of Georgia, were much aroused over the arrest and detention of some of their citizens, and, in heated correspondence with the War Department, claimed that the rights of the States were in peril.