fx mo Duke University Libraries Reply of S. Tea Conf Pam 12mo #939 REPLY OE S. TEACKLE AYALLIF, ESQ., LETTEB OF HON. JOHN SHERMAN PUBLISHED BY THE OFFICERS OF THE FIRST MARYLAND INFANTRY. Camp First Maryland Infvntrv, ) , • April Otfi, 186*. S The officers of the First Maryland Regiment have adopted the form of this publication to give as extended a circulation as possible to the following letter, addressed by S. Teackle Wallis, Esq., of Baltimore city, to John Sherman, of Ohio. The length of the letter hap*pre- clude'd its publication by the press, whose columns are necessarily filled with die mom en to 6s events now transpiring. The present course is, therefore, adopted to give circulation to the letter of Mr. Wallis. The attentive perusal of the public is earnestly invoked, not only because the letter will amply repay the re dcr who merely seeks an intellectual return for the time thus spent, but more especially that it-set-* forth, in a lucid and unanswerable manner, the true position a -d by tl j' Rights party in Maryland, at the time when her legislative proceedings were rudely terminated by the arbitrary and tyrannical arrest and imprisonmen; of the members of the Legis- lature, and because it shows the heroic spirit which actuated and sup- : them in their trials, and which disdained any compromise of principle to obtain a freedom which they accepted as their uncondi- tional right: • • , Baltimore; January 3d, 1863. Hon. John Shermik, U. S. Senator: Sir : I received on Sun-day, December 28th, the letter bearing date the 2Grh, which you addressed to me in professed reply to mine of the 12th.. 1 find it also in the New York Times of December 3 1st, with. an editorial notice, from which 1 infer that it was forwarded to that journal at least as soon as it was transmitted to me. My own' letter would not have been handed to the eWorld" for publication, had not the the lapse* of a week, without even an acknowledgment of its receipt, given me reason to suppose that you intended to be discour- tcotis as well as unjust. The tenor of your reply, as you have at last fumished*it, does nothing to relieve me of that impression, it being obviously intended for a party pamphlet, ad rdptavdum, instead of an answer, in good faith, to the 8 object upon which 1 addressed you. You have entirely misapprehended the purpose of my letter of -the 12th, if you really suppose, as you profess to do, thai [ desired or attempted to convince yon of my own "loyalty," or that of the lie- gislature of Maryland, to which I had the honor to belong in I86VL . I do not mean to be uncivil, when I assure vou that nothing was farther from my ihoughts, and that there are few things to which I could be possibly more- indifferent, personally, than the judgment . which gentlemen who bear y,our relation to the governing party in the United United States may choose to form, in r gard to myself, my opinions, or my action Still less would 1 venture to deal so disre-. spectfully with the General Assembly of Maryland, as to recognize in • ycu or your partisan associates, any right or fitness to pass author i tative judgment upon them or their official conduct. As I understand the' form of government under which the people of this country have, until within the last two years, supposed them- selves to live, no citizen is criminally amenable for his public or pri- :te* conduct, except to the laws of the land as administered- by the, . constituted judicial tribunals. "* No opinion,'' you, yourself, admit) " is criminal under Our law," and'I think I may assflme — whether t you admit it, or not — that there are no acts, for which any citizen can be lawfully held to account, except those which the law has for- bidden. ' No officer of the government, whether civil or military, has any more right — as I have been taught — to create offences; or -define them, except oalyas the lav; prescribes, than he has to reb *r murder on the highway, or proclaim himself king or sultan. It, is of the essence of con ial government — in peace or wat, as has always heretofore been understood — that the Constitution and, laws should be masters, and public officers, like private individual^ only their ser- vants. Beyond the lines of their strict constitutional powers, such officers 'are as literally without authority, before the law, as the hum- blest citizen; for they are, in fact, privat; wrong-doers, and not public officers from the moment that they have tran i those constitu- tional limits.- Gentlemen of your way thinking, however, have adjudged these rudimental and long established principles to be v. holly obsolete, under the sort of government which you need, and have set up, to serve your purpo.-es. You have accordingly bonowed, from -the vocabulary of despotism, the name of "disloyalty," to designate that. undefined and undefinable offence — not known to free institutions,' but which you have seen fit, in the plenitude of your prerogatives, *o' create — which consists in .questioning the wisdom, canvassing the policy 7 , doubting the integrity, or, if need be, resisting the corruptions. and usurpations of those who temporarily lipid and p 'ostitute power. With like propriety»and consistency you have adopted the catch-word of " loyalty," to indicate the equally undefinable public virtues and cxcellendes which you would have it", believed that yourselves 'and - 3 jour partisans embody and mono Knowing no lt loyal x myself, in my i elation to ihe Federal : t that obe-" dience vrl; h •:•■-'. as a citizen, to the ' - . in, I an i , u ally expounded and ad . at ilia: I am as free as i can be, from the Blig! •' .ou or ; ■ any one else, I •' I- -j;il '" your fa the Unite. 1 Sta $cept id " i to the ; my State r of the F scl- eral go* ■':■- aei ■:. or to the laws e itutiona I undei that ild probably feel myself h times u'of ten. i ■ . 1 to eon ■ • • ." A* to the more : of the rebutte, which ins ; .h»t you "fail iinpres to i if ,1 c. fth the gravity a to express it * ■' " •'-- n ' ' more I —with g n or j " obe ort; and I cann ; ■-- pecta - , .v part, to th | imp* tuous I f the hallucination, • en -of ; political • ion, at this time, seen i labor, set m- g - up, above the law and i. ■ an I ( tipnei itizens and [t i / idea — tleiueri, at a ■ > j i correct lent o ject to it . ered in a son oi not cnti led to >;•. li :ati©n, unless it first n » )$ p I ** loj is of km to the oilier doc;. t • t '• . ila But another and a very satigfa . p yourself, tvhty i was. especially oa ibout \ referred to. ifoi of yo i i your rel i-alto i . re~A— whether we intended or did not intend tO«pass;the c I o( seces- sion, which was the exclusive topic of m\ letter. Now, I do not know how all this-may 'strike the mass of the paiti- I the Times, and for whom you wrote your letter, but it is to me that the class for* whom a Senator of t it to write, will see, at a glance, that it is a mere ev :-. in antf a clap-trap. Who was it that raiaod and framed . the in- tention of the Legislature of Maryland, to pass an ordinance of se- Noi 1. certainly, but Mr. Lincoln, and Mr. Hickflan, and Mr. I n. and your I saw your speech rep rted. You were the accusing parties. You had the ^eviden^c m— -or you ought to have had— when you attempted to j -.-rage h had been inflictejj upon us. You £ra in order to escape the just reproach of making loose an 1 random and indefinite accusations, and of hav ng deprived men of their liberty w thout specific and ascertained cause therefor, you i, among you, and agreed upon the charge that we had throw our State out of th Unioh by adopting a secession ordinance. Yen put that fact forward, of your own choice, as the burden of our guiltj and the c#rner-st$>nc of your justification. The President of the United States, speaking through Mr. Hickman, not only made tj isation in words, but with his usual graceful playfulness, when ' arest s are in question, had his, «t "the pock • whiohthe "resolutions of secession" were to have been carri.- I I • lerick. The government newspapers, in Baltimore an ; , teemed, at the time of.our arrest and afterwards, with stories about the mys- terious " ordinance/' The rufiians who were sent by the Secretary of State to our dwellings, at midnight, to seize upon our correspondence and rifle our desks and safes, spoke, openly, in the ;' the inmates of our house, concerning the existence of such an ordinance in the possession of some of us, and of their instructions to search for it. In my own case, they were for six or seven hours in pursuit of it, with all the ingenuity and the appliances of mare respectable burglars Produce, or get the President to p oduce. all ,7 papers connected with our arrest, and I w%!l almost be willing to stake my w\oh case on the fact, th t they wiU be found to specif/ our .intention to pass such an ordnance, as the precise offence creating the necessity for tie suppression of the Legislature. In more than one of the public journals, it was mentioned — and repeated long afterwards at the North, when I was in Fort Warren — that an '-ordinance," supposed to be in my handwri- ting, had actually been delivered to the Secretary of State, whiose • delight at the possession of such a treasure was, one day, rudely put an end to, by the discovery that it was a forgery — the work, as was stated, of some "loyal" clerk in his office, \Chom I had once; prose- cuted. for a former crime. I do not know that the story was false for it was not- officially promulgated, nor do I know that it was true. I refer to it, and to the other circumstances which I have mentioned, for the purpose of showing that when' an intended ordinance o*f secession was set up as our offence, and as the justification for our arrest, the pur- pose of the government was specifically to fix upon us that specific "treasonable purpose.". I had no reason or right to t believe that., in- stead of meaning what they said, and what they charged, the Presi- dent and his defenders meant something else, and not what they said and charged. Iliad no right or reason to suppose that a general, in-» definite, treasonable mind and purpose,* not concentrated in any par- ticular act, was all that was meant to be ascribed to us, and that when I denied the specific and oft repented accusation, upon which all of you agreed, I should be told that it was a " technical denial," and that I ought ?o have entered upon a defence of the Police authorities of • Baltimore, the difficulties on and after the 19th of April, and the pro- ceedings, at large, of the Legislature. If I had done so, would you not have been the first to say that I ,had' guiltily evaded the real and vital question ? . If I, or some other person interested, had not denied that we intended to pass the ordinance in controversy, would you no" have assumed, and have claimed the right to assume, that such an intention was justly ascribed to us ? And if, after gentlemen of high position, like the President and members of Congress, have themselves deliberately selected and framed and tendered an issue of fact, they call the denial of it a technicality, as you do, what reason have I to assume that they will not again do same thing ? What grourfds have*[ for,believing that you mean to stand by the fresh statement, in your letter, of what you call facts, any more than by the other alleged fact •of the ordinance of secession* by which you now refuse to stand?. Would I have any security,. after showing the untruth and futility of them aU, that you would not -say I hal written a series of "tech- nical denials" to isolated facts, and that the broad fact of my general "disloyalty," or that of some of my friends and acquaintances, was all that y u had intended o charge ? There is no arguing, permit me to«say, with gentlemen w T ho adopt that style of reasoning. You furnish more than one striking illustra- tion of its vices in the very case before us. You would have it, for instance, that it made no difference to the President, and mikes ncno in the argument, whether the Legislature of Maryland was about to pass an ordinance itself, or to call a Convention which might do the same thing. The" one intention, if you are to be credited, would have been as good a justification as' the other, for the arrest of the Legis- lature*. You. can hardly mean this, although you s^y it. Any ordi- nary, person who did not desire to arrest for the mere sake of arrest- ing, would suppose, that when the purpose of tl;o President was to prevent, by summary arrests, the passage of an ordinance of secession, he would arrest only those who intended to pass it, and that instead of arresting the Legislature for intending to call a Convention, he would not' e-ven arrest the members of the Convention its. If, unti] he had reasonable certainty that they intended to do the act which he feared. Certainly it ill becomes you to, assert that the intention of calling a Convention would have been a " treasonable and disloyal purpose,"* when the " entire .insignificance" which your com ascribes to the' Legislature, and the "distinguished loyalty'" with which it clothes the people of Maryland, must render it quite certain, in your judgment, tliat a Convention, if called, would lave triumphantly overturned the Legislature and her. But the point is not worth pursuing farther. Your reply, 1 r< peat, is an evasion and nt)t a maintenance of your position. My denial was •a " technical denial," but a denial as substantial as the deliberate and intentional charge which it repelled. It is no part' of my purpose to follow you through the long axnr allegations and insinuations, outside of the only quesl ween " which ycu endeavor to bolster up the justice of -the proceedings which for so long deprived the Major and Police Cos;;: ra of Baltimore and the members of the State Legislature oi' their HI I have no means whatever of access to the correspondence which you say " is in the hands of the Ggvernjnent offioers," and upon which you found your principal impeachment of 'the fidelity of the police authorities. I cannot tell to what extent it exists, or • what i authenticity. "But having as a member of the Legislature, examined- and fully approved their course, 1 know enough of it, to justify me in declaring that the statements in regard to. them, of which you have allowed your letter to be fhe vehicle to the public, are partial, garbled and unjust, and frequently untrue. I willingly persuade myself you have been deceived into promulgating them, for I fancy that I can see in them the work of hands wtrich are not yours, but which p irate ointments and malice, and local interests and.haire 1 have made the perpetual bearers of falsehood and malignant counsels to the Executive chamber, during the whole long agony of this wretched war. If you had reflected, for an instant, it seems to me that you would not have permitted yourself to enter upon a crusade, under such guidance. ft is now nearly eighteen months since the Baltimore Commissioners of Police, then prisoners illegally confined at Fort Mc Henry, pre- sented their respectful memorial to the two Houses of Congr They protested their innocence of any offence against the laws of the country; insisted upon their right to be informed of the accusations against them ; invited scruti'ny into their whole conduct, private and official, aud asserted "their readiness to meet, without a moment's delay,. any'charge which might be responsibly laid against their individual or official proceedings." Suggesting their inability to obtain redress, pending the suspension of the Habeas corpus in Maryland, they respect- fully and earnestly invoked the immediate interposition of Congicss In tlteir behalf." That memorial was treated wii.li open indignity anu- contempt. From the moment cf its presentation, down to this hour, neither the Sen'atg, of which you are a member, nor theiower House, has given any heed to they* complaints, or taken one step towards the vindication of their rights or of public liberty or justice m- their bc- halfr You hive not given them the accusations against them (if any) or the- names \bi their accusers. You have not afforded them an opportunity of even proving their innocence, much, less have you allowed them a public hearing or trial, either before a congressional committee or the constituted judicial tribunals. * Grand jury after grand jury. selected by a Marshal of Mr. Lincoln's appointment,, (to say nothing of the grand juriBs of the State.) has met since they were. taken from their homes in July, 186J. At least-one Federal grand jury has deliberately investigated the whole proceedings which you have dis- cussed in youi- letter, with all the evidence in the possessipn of the gov- ernment before it — including, of course, everything to which you have had access, in order to prepare the defence of the government which you have published. Yet no, bill of indictment has been found, or could be procured to be found. The House of Representatives, cer- tainly — and perhaps the Senate, also^ — called upon the President to state the grounds upon which the gentlemen in question were arrested and imprisoned, but the President refused the information, as'" incom- patible with the public interests." You were all satisfied with that refusal, and there jou and those wdio think and side with you— repre- sentatives of a people calling itself free, and boasting yourselves the special apostles of freedom— -allowed the case of your oppressed and helpless fellow-citizens to rest, unheard, unconsidered — scorned. There was not/a»man of you who could rise -above the level of political and sectional vindu-tiveness to an act of simple common justice, much less to vindicate a great principle, or to strike an honest blow for pfiblic and private freedom. * You allowed the victims, to languish, fojc nearly a year and a half, in prison after prison, to which they w r ere dragged — you emancipating. negroes the while, hy the thousand, ae the President now is, by the million. And no,w that the prisons have been opened, and the prisoners in question released without condition — not willingly, but because pub- lic opinion had demanded it. at the ballot-box, and the gathering stor-m of public retribution was too portentous to be longer disregarded — you, a Senator^ who have aided in doing all this injury, are not ashamed gratuitously to attack, at an unfair advantage,, through the columns of a newspaper, the men whom you have so long' Refused to charge, or hear, or try, publicly, feiirly, openly, and where they could meet their 'accusers face td face, according to their rights and your obligations. You consent to^gather 'up, from " the hands of Govern- ment officers " and local informers for publication against them,' ex parte statements and apocryphal scraps to the sources and originals of which they have, no access for challenge or disproof, ami under pre- text of replying to a letter from me, upon a different subject, which' you evade, you thus .seek to cover the retreat and the shame of the government and your own dereliction of duty. Do you think this is ii • • 1 worthy of you, as a gentleman or a Senator l Do jou think it hon- orable— -nay, even decent — in the Executive, ornis'subordinates, irre- sponsibly to furriisb to you, in such a way ant for speh purj) what Mr.' Li: r it would be ' ; incompatible with the public interests : ' to disclose to you, as a member of th be, to be used legitimately and responsibly, for public'- ends", in your official plac and sphere ? If the incompat he pretended has now ceased to exist, why does he not respond to the requisition of ( •omes hint instead of privately retailing his " evidence ,: to for the pages of a party journal ? If the President and his Secre- taries of State and V, a-r are really able to establi -4* the policeauthorities, which you have set lip for them, why have they not done i no g'rand j.ury been able to find an indictment against the alleged criminals? If there are letters, and minutes, and tele- grams of tfcCfi parti •. in question, which "would condemn them, as pretend, and of which the. President and hi- have control, why arc they not produced, o-penly and upon official i fore some tribunal honest and feai ! ss enough todi ag out the whole truth and brjng*thc accused, or the a icusers, \« i shame and justice I You know very well that the Mayor of Baltimore, and Messrs. Howard and Gatchell, two of. the police commissioners, during the whole of their long imprisonment, denounced and defied t^e al itrarj p< wer and conduct of tho Govern • le.manding their release a e . and refgisir purchase il shadow of a concession. You know that they were at last discharged without yi he ninth part of a hair. Ho you think Mr. Seward and Mr. Stanton arc magnanimous and be- ilent persons, likely to iy to such contumacy, where they have only to produce Bgaiast the recusants, from the jjles of their detective office^, conclusive evidtnee of treason ! Is there one word you have said, in your long letter, to demonstrate th e of the th, i! true, would not make it as rig the sworn ami b'ounden duty of Mr. Lin i his thi yours, to retain them in-custody still, for trial State the thing as you may, -sir. i: is not a thing for either you or the Executive to be proud of. Your mode of dealing with the guilt' oi* innocence of men and their liberty, is i t vari istitu- tions. the habits, the very instincts of a free people, whose love of justice and lair piny, and, let me add, b — -lias not yet been entirely debauched away by their repVeseutativ s or rulers. I will not do the injured men in question the wrong, nT>r public sentiment, the outrage, nor myself the discredit, of submitting theii i your arbitrament, or' to trial upon your newspaper impeachment. I assert now, as a matter within my own knowledge, that when, as one of the counsel of the police cc s, I visited General Banks with my colleagues, on the very day when ihe arrest was made. General Banks, who had ma ;o it, •assured us, explicitly, that there was no .'charge against our clients, impeaching their integrity in any way, and that they had been arrested chiefly as a measure of precaution'. 1 state, further, from my personal knowledge also, that on the Cub of April, 1861, when I accompanied the Mayor 6i this city to Washington, 12 where he bad been invited by Mr. Lincoln for consultation, the President himself, in the presence of his whole Cabinet and of Lieu- tenant General Scott, as well as of tny companions and myself, more ' than once volunteered to declare that he had carefully investigated the conductof the police authorities of Baltimore on the 19th 'of April, and was entirely satisfied that they had\lischarged their duty with good faith, and to the best- of their ability. No member of the Cabinet ventured to gainsay the. judgment of the President, although the Mayor, with pei feet frankness, informed them that in conjunction with Governor I licks, the Police board, of which he was a member, had ordered the destruction of the bridges — that " warlike operation," which you denounce as treason in the concrete. As the name of Lx- Governor Hicks has been recently added to the lists of patriots and statesmen who adorn the Senate on the •'loyal" side, his certificate upon the question may perhaps- weigh somewhat in your judgment. If Vii'u will tarn to. his date Excellency's message to the Legislature * of Maryland, on the 25th of April, lS,61,*you will find him declaring that " the Mayor and. Police Board gave to the Massachusetts soldiers (on the i9t'h) all the protection they could afford, acting with the utmost promptness and bravery." I trust that after reading it, you may modify to some extent the lawyer-like proposition of your letter, that it wai an overt act of treason for the Legislature qf Maryland to pass the act for the protection of the police authorities, which, you declare to have " outlawed the United States and their soldiers'," That statute did not pretend to impair private rights or remedies, as the indemnity law recently passed by the House of Representatives, in Mr. Lincoln's behalf, so unblushingly and absurdly does. Surely you. do not mean to .intimate it, as ■ your opinion that ,Mr. Lincoln's indemnity act "outlaws" noi only the thousands who have been his victims, but the whole of the citizens. of the States over whom he has brandished the sword of martial law. If you c>o, I trust that the country will hear from you in the Senate, and not through the- Times. But I have dwelt too long on this branch of the subject". I under- take to promise yo'u, in leaving it, that whenever the President of the United States, on his own responsibility, will give to the late poiiee authorities of Baltimore an op'portunity of Confronting their accusers, of being heard and judged as free men may submit to be, without surrendering their rights and self respect, they will vindicate their con kur from every jrf.ist reproach, to the satisfaction of all whose good opinion is worth having* If you doubt what I say, you have only to have the experiment made. I think I may add that the gentlemen •named will- manage to find for themselves a way of bringing the mat- ter before some legitimate tribunal, -where some, at least, of those who have been engaged in '. : outlawing " thein, will have an opportunity of ascertaining how far the justification .you have set up is well-founded, in fact or law. I pass, now, to your assault upon the Maryland Legislature, con- cerning which and its proceedings, as challenged by you, I'propose to enter into but little discussion. It is due, however, to my colleague from Baltimore and to myself, that I should deny, in the most unquali- 1'3 £ed manner, the truth of the statement whiclvyou make, that our election was but a " fprm," and that we were chosen only because " no one dared to oppose the armed rebellion, headed by the police commis- sioners." Among all the wholesale fictions with which you have been furnished by your collaborators here, there is not one more profli than this. 1 assert what no man of veracity will deny here — under his own signature and alleging fact in verification of his denial — that from the time of the inauguration of the board' of polioe of Baltimore in the spring of 1860, down to the hour of its suppression by mili force, in the summer of 1861, the freedom of -the ballot box an I f access to it was as sacredly and perfectly guarded and maintained for all citizens, of all parties and Opinions,- as ever under any system I or could be possible. I challenge the production of any ch trge.to the contrary, from the worst partisan or the most corrupt pi\ rig us, until after the suppression of the board had rei.dered slander i sary to vindicate usurpation. I assert, and am read* to prove, when- ever a single fact to the contrary is alleged, that th securing a fvco and fair ehectii n on the &4th of April, 1861, wei ample and in as good faith as ever before, and thai no man in the whole community — not even the most rabid and obnoxious and unwoivhy par titan — would have met with the slightest obstacle in voting for any candidates whom he might have preferred indeed 1 challenge proof to the contrary, when I further assert, that, daring the whole of the excitement which occupied and followed the 1 9th of April, the b of police extended to every citizen cf Baltimore th i nple and efficient pro'cetiori in person and property, and that security in was actually had by all amid the heats of the st-iife which occurred, and was impending, to an extent which puts to shame the contempo- raneous condition of the large cities of the North. Ypu m or disbelieve this, honestly, I admit. 1 at it is true riev You have no right to doubt it because it was officially u by the mayor and city council, in their memorial to Co-ngrei », in t8Gl, and by the board of police in theirs, and an investigation of its 1 was respectfully and earnestly besought at your hand-. < you re- fused. But I do not wonder at your d mbting it. amid t! press of falsehoods with which your partisans, here and elsev have overwhelmed the history of those times, during the , ment and absence, and the enforced silence, of those whom you all joined in endeavoring to crush for their opinions. That : persons, apprehending further military collision, left the city with their families* for the time, is undoubtedly true. That others, who probably ■ are your special ihforrjaents, ran incontinently away, in shtfer fright, when there was not the .slightest danger to them or theirs, is equally true, and it is quite natural- that these lasjfc al magnify the dangers before whichtheir own heroism quailed. But that' any man, of any party, who asked protection from the police, had any difficulty in obtaining it, or that any citizen of Baltimore had any real reason for seekiug personal saTety in flight, is wholly unl Least of all, as I have sail, is there any ground for intimating a ques- tion as to t s o perfect freedom of the ballot-box on the 2(lth of April. u The vo'e was small, because there was but one ticket in the field ; and although I was a member of the delegation elected, 1 will not allow; false i to prevent me from saying, that I believe it was person- ally unexceptionable to the great mass of the people. It was com- I, for the most part, of men of business, who wove not profes- sional pbliti ;ions and who were known to be men of character, intel- ligence, and moderation in their \iews. To many of them, the accep- tance of such a place was well known to be a Ba< rifice. To myself it Was a serious one, which only a serfse of duty as a citizen prevented me from refusing uritey.'. Of the delegation, the majority ha4 been prominent members of the. old Whig party — some of them, at time, active members of the American party 1 believe that we should have been fairly and easily elected, by an pi ■ u ing ma- jority, over any. oppo.^ition that might have been presented; audi know that if tljere i ad been any opposition, it would inve found the lot-box as free as^ws., found it, and .would h- irly d ah with, by rhe police authorities and ourselves. If you really, believe that w never ented more tlnyi nine tjaousaud voters out of thirty thousand in the city ; that the rest of the 3 of" distin- guished loyal t f ; that pur Support grew smaller ■ ■■ , from, day to day, afterwards, and that we were actually frighti 6m our in- tent".' res of treason, by the "thre .( of expulsion" on the part of "the loyal people" of the town — to say nothing of the ■•; menaceof resistance from B . 1 —I shonld be ed to know in what consisted the danger wfa incoln, or any one else, had a right to apprehend from us. '••'■. xt or ex- cuse had he for arresting us, when, in addition to : ; security and our "entire insignificance," he had armed | •.and had pve.inor to aid him in disarmiii -nts ? You entire! rid — you certainly '«misjrep'i it he state of things in Baltimore on ■and imnfedi#tej;v aft< ' April, It Wi of comparative unanimil opinion — noi a reign of terrori The facts have b< led from you, or di fied, to answer the purp inform- ants. Whe$i 1 n ^speech to the people, on th T wjhilch you have q,uo i ' • an absurb and false report, I was :ted — uajL, almost f I stand, by one of the mi ' " loval" gentlemen of | re — immaculately "loye' rw>w a ihen — who not oni\ iled -what I said, to the echo, but ; i me : . 'U I had finished. Jt'wa 1 days afterward •■ invited ,me to join a company he v daing, to support tl itiei i My poor remarks, on i.nvd-- to, we ■" . e'mendous cheering by crowds ns, — " Uuioft '.: ofpre — .many of whom are ately "h-.y.'i rbu may count on their support to the Ad- min;s ■ o, to the 'overthrow of cv^ry of the Cons'ti only the clause which secures •• th ition of con; ■ ive had recent access to an' autograph subscription list co signatures of many leading mercantile houses of the tnojjt ional and uncompromising u loyalty," and now in 15 the very bosom of the true faith, with yourself — wherein they attested the sincerity of their respect for the motives and purposes of the authorities, on the 19th of April, by subscribing amounts, set opp site their names, for the purpose of purchasing arms, to be used under the direction of the Board of Police. I dafe Bay the. list will be given to the public before long. It was probably with these arms — for there were scarcely any others — that the Baltimore American, since and now the organ of the Government here, and certainly th< and mould of "loyalty*' among us, suggest' nil, that the Northern troops should be met *' beyond the limits of the city" — a su'gg-estion, however, which the police authorities did not e ftt to adopt. It was only the day before that I :r- nal, in its afternoon issue, had said — -in Avoid- similar to those which 'you ascribe to me oh that point — and which, with Seine unimportant* modification of language, £ did certainly use — th iloodofour citizens", shed in our . is an irresistible appeal to us.: 11 to unite as Marylanders." The appropriation of half a million by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, which you d< hiture for having ratified', w : spontancousb ' effective by a voluntary tender of the whole amount, aa a loan, < n the part of the banks, on the very day^of the adoption of the citjf 1 was present at the Mayor's office on that day, when a committee of bank officers, as "loyal" as yourself or General Butler,. made tender of the money to his Honor, and I well remember the juhilanl satisfaction which the chairman* expressed at having been authorized to do so. Nothing are, would be more difficult than lonvince ' all the worl tlemen to whom I have alluded, that they did what would have just.fied th" -;t in sending th 'ort War; instead of taking counsel with them and theirs. -s done, to suppre.-s th'e ••<;; loyal element." Ycm, ddubi specimen of elegiac composition which ' issued, fr I IMcHehry, when the proprietor of. the American was torn from his "sorrowing wife and daughters " and shut up "in a depot o\' traitors" for a i\:\y or two because of his precipitate attempt to sell an 'account of the "grand strategic movement" to Harrison's Laudin I could give, you a host of other* examples, to illustrate the public unanimity which I have described as-existing T.,.-* nllnot behMdcn much longer tinder a bushel, I imagine — but [•presume you wi|J be satisfied with a single additional one. Indeed, I d i uo & . in examining • r of the proceedings in Monument Square on the lSUh cJf April, you could have -been withdrawn, ; observatjoi ascribed to so humble an individual as myself, fr ;ech of your present colleague, then his Excellency, Governor Hicks, upon the same occasion K you had taken the trouble, you ive learned how that " loyal " citizen and officer then and there declare I that " he had had three conferences' with the. Mayor, and they h<. upon every point presented ' and further that "As was a Marylmder md would sooner hive his right arm cat off than raise it against a sist r Southern State /" I am sure yon muett have seen, from your obvious familiarity. with the proceedings of the Legislature, that in his opening me?s ge, a few 1G days after, the Governor showed, by his correspondence, that he had remonstrated against the sending of any more troops through Mary- land, and had protested to General Butler against the landing, at Annapolis, of the division command. 'd by .that person.. If this, and- what I have said before, be not sufficient to satify you that everybody ought not to be hanged who was naturally and painfully excited by the shedding of die blood of our people in our streets, and by the bar- barous threats of Northern presses and mobs, and who desired to avert the shedding of more blood — let it at all events furnish you with a test of Mr. Lincoln's impartiality in the use of his supreme preroga- tives. Consider Governor Hicks, I pray you, as a Senator of the United Siates with his right arm* as yet unamputated, and Mr. Crown and myself— -who vowed no limbs to the surgeon — as prisoners just ^ released from Fort Warren, after fourteen months of ruthless cap- tivity.! Your charge that the members of the Legislature were only deterred by fear or menace of popular violence from adopting such measures as they deemed expedient, is as untrue as the charge already refuted, that the election of the Baltimore delegation was the result of illegal / pressure upon the voters. I am quite sure that no definite threats of popular outrage e\ v er reached the Legislature, to my knowledge; afid certainly no one , ■ ttached any. importance to them, if they were made. There were some foolish talk, among a few excitable people at Fred- erick, which I have no .doubt there were" knaves enough to .encourage; but I know that it was simply laughed a,t, and the parties who" were guilty of it knew better than to carry it beyond the 'swagger of the bar-rooms. The " Force Bill," as you call it, was not. passed, simply hfcause it. wa's both inexpedient and at variance with the Constitution of the State, in the judgment of the .large majority of the members of the Legislature, who were opposed to if. If we had deemed rt otherwise, we should not have hesitated or feared to pa-sit; but, although it had gone to" a second reading in the Senate, the opposition to it on the part of the members of the House became* so decided, as soon as its provisions were generally canvassed, thai it was recommit- ted in the Senate, .and died in committee. Incver knew of the existence of the bill, or of the purpose to introduce it, until after itjvas printed arrd had passed to the second reading; and I d. not believe that more than one or two members, a farthest, of the Baltimore delegation were better informed. I know that we were unanimously opposed to it, as soon as we knew w'hat it was. So much for the measures which we did not pass, and' which you seem to consider-as justifying our arrest, quire as decidedly as those which we adopted. _ For these last I have no apology or explanation " to make, to you or to any one. I have reviewed them all, carefully and cal sly, and- am ready to *tand by them all. Of'thj position which they gave to the State, upon the great questions which have -severed the Union, I am proud, as in my last letter I said to you. The sad experiences of. the intermediate time have given them a sanc- tion and a confirmation, which no candid or rational man can dispute. Those measures constitute the whole of what, as a Legislature, we did, 1? / or thought it proper and practicable, and within our legitimate sphere, to do; and the frank, and explicit manner in which our conclusions in regard to the war, its causes, conduct and consequences, wers pro- mulgated, and officially communicated to the government — oven after the armed forces of the United States had fu i of the State, and the President had disregarded the hob hs corpus, and had arrested' and imprisoned the police authorities of its chief city — would have satis- fied a fairer man than yourself, that it was a libel to charge "us with "conspiring" or with being intimidate I fro. a the execu'i >n of purposes which we entertained. With these measures and recorded opinions of the Legislature before the world, I could not falsify, if I would, the position which we occupied. Nor can you. We believed the war to be unjust and unconstitutional — brought about by the 'aggressions of the Northern people upon the rights of the South. We believed the restoration of the Union, by force of arms, to be a cruel absurdity and an impossibility, and ' d and implored the government of the United States to give us peace, upon the onh terms on which we believed it to be possible — the recognition of Southern independence. In a quarrel in which We believed the S uth to have the right on its 6ide, our sympathies were, of course, with the South, and they wero stn ngthened by habits, ties, associations, and common institutions and interests. We were satisfied that the troops which wjsre passing through the State to Washington— and which Mr. Lincoln, in my hearing and that of his Cabinet, on the 2ist of April, 1881, solemhly declared to be intended only for 4, thc defense of the capital," and not for invasion — were meant to subjugate the Southern States. We be- lieved that they were destined, sooner or later, to be the bearers of an emancipation proclamation, and to stir up servile insurrection. Wo regarded them, therefore, as Governor Ilrcks had styled them, in his letter to General Butler, as "Northern troops" — on an unlawful, sec- tional and unconstitutional errand, to which the pretence of "restor- ing the LTnion" gave no sanction in our eyes. We believed the people of the State of Maryland, in the event of the dissolution of the Union, to have the right of determining to which of the two sections their feelings and interests inclined them, and we had no doubt that, upon that naked Question, three-fourths of them, at least, would seek to join their destinies with those of the South. These opinions we had the unquestioned right to entertain and to express, and we did eo. Yo will find them all proclaimed in the re- ports and resolutions which the Legislature adopted. They are my deliberate opinions, still. But though they were otijr opinions, we knew and felt that we were not the people of Maryland, and that we had no right, as a mere legislative body, to pass an ordinance of seces- sion, or to revolutionize the State, or to alter its government, or to plunge it into war, of our own motion. These things, were for the people themselves to determine on, and to do or to leave undone : and I solemnly asseveiate that it never entered into the plans or purposes or contemplation of the Legislature, to substitute itsejf for the peo- ple, in these regards, or to "conspire" to do so. We should un- doubtedly have placed our people in a condition to defeud themselves 18 and the State against lawless aggressions of the General government, if we had been able to do it. This was our duty, and it was the con- stitutional light of the people, an I subsequent suffering-? and wrongs hive demonstrated i paramount necessity. If we could, we should, nd all peradvQi ture, have prevented- the snsppfessibn of the tnunU cip.al government of Baltimore and tjio General, Assembly of the State, and the sul ion of a military commandant, and his will, for the laws and Constitution of Maryland. We should never have permit ed the illegal arrests, the searches and seizures without oath, or warrant, which have trodden out the fundamental guaranties of freedom among us. We should not have tolerated the suspension of the habeas corpus at Mr. Lincoln's- pleasure, or, the suppression of news- papers and ice speech, or have allowed a judge to be dfaggeel, bleeds ing., from the bench, as in the case of Judge Qarmiehael, because ho had given the provisions of the Constitution, securing the liberty of the cjtizen, in charge to a grand jury. Least of ;dl would we ever have consented that an "election" should be held and dire: ted and consummated iu Maryland, under the proclamation of a General of the United States ar.my. Of all this you may rest assured. Unhappily, however, we Avere powerless, and we knew and felt it. The ptoplewere unarmed and defenceless. The Governor of the State was a reckless partisan who subordinated his duties to his pas- sions, and had no greater respect for his State or himself, than to per- mit -bne of his official proclamations to be contemptuously "counter- manded," through the newspapers, by a recruiting captain of United States volunteers in Baltimore. 'We could have nothing to hope from such an Executive — his " right arm" to the contrary notwithstanding. Being less unscrupulous than he, we would not invade his constitu- tional province, and withoutdoing so we could do nothing that requir- ed Executive co-operation. .For even the protection of our people, therefore, and the execution of our laws, and the.passive maintenance of the dignity and constitutional rights of our State we were helpless. How absurd 10 contemplate us as in an aggressive and belligerent at- titude towards the Government and armies of the United States Your grave attempt to set up the doctrine that our mere legislative proceed- ings — laws passed and resolutions adopted by us, as a State Leigisla- lature — were " overt acts" of treason, under a ruling of Chief Justice Marshall's, will not deceive any one who has access to the horn-book of our common profession. If our resolutions wore foolish — or wick* ed, as you would have it— they were still merely the expression of opinions. If our laws were unconstitutional, they were simply void, and the peril was to those only who might happen to act under them. Ydu have aided'in passing too many unconstitu ional laws, yourself, for anyone to doubt, who has observed your public career, thi t you are altogether aware of you* impunity, as a legislator, in doing so. L believe I have answered whatever it is proper I 'should answer in your letter. I have done so, necessarily at great length and with muchinconvenience to myself, in view of my health and occupation. I have only answered it at all, because I felt that you had taken an unfair advantage of my previous letter, and I did not chpose yon 19 should do so unnoticed. The cold blooded and unmanly comment which you make on my reference to the indignities and indecencies of our treatment, as prisoners, would have deprived you of any right to ft reply, as a matter of respect to you. If it were possible that tho Confederate government had in fact dealt as brutally with prisoners, as we were, at times, treated, it would have seemed small reason why you should select such brutality as the only point for imitation. You aio abetter judge, however, than I am, of the views of your political associates, and I therefore presume you to speak advisedly, when you indicate that the Administration revenges upon kidnapped and help- less citizens of the United Stater — who have nothing to rely on but its sense of justice and humanity — tho wrongs which it professes to havo received from enemies in arms*. I am, Sir, ^our obedient servant, S. T. WALLIS. ihz - 2S75, \ • Hollinger Corp. pH8.5