The other president from the Illinois legislature?
I wonder when the secessions will start. January? April perhaps?
Well, lets see what we can find.
- April 19th, 1861, Riot in Baltimore when 6th Massachusetts passes through the city.
- 27 April 1861, Lincoln suspends writ of habeas corpus
- 13 September 1861 Francis Key Howard, Baltimore newspaper editor, imprisoned at Ft. McHenry.
along with the Mayor of Baltimore, the police chief, all the police commissioners, many members of the legislator. Many were released upon swearing an oath of allegiance to the union.
The outbreak of the Civil War created a difficult situation, especially in the border slave states like Maryland. Officially, Maryland stayed in the Union and offered its support to the Federal government, but many citizens had strong sympathies to the southern states. These feelings got even stronger after Lincoln’s Proclamation in 1861. While Maryland regiments were included in the Union army, many Marylanders joined the Confederacy and created several Infantry and Cavalry regiments, under the leadership of men like William H. Murray or Colonel Edward Rutland Dorsey.
Ordinary citizens expressed their southern sympathies in songs as “Maryland, My Maryland!” by James Ryder Randall or “I’m Good Old Rebel.” Baltimore women, who sympathized with the South used the Confederate flag for their dresses. The mostly peaceful southern sympathizers turned violent on April 19th, 1861, when the 6th Massachusetts regiment was passing through Baltimore on its way to Washington, D.C. A riot on President Street broke out and resulted in the first blood of the Civil War. In response, the Maryland Governor Thomas H. Hicks and Baltimore Mayor George. W. Brown requested that the President not to send any more troops through the city and the City Council agreed to raise $500,000 to be used to build city defenses.
The suspension of the civil rights in Maryland by the President followed and many significant Maryland officials were arrested and imprisoned in Fort McHenry, including the Mayor Brown, the Marshal of Police G. P. Kane, several state delegates, as well as attorney Francis Key Howard, the grandson of Francis Scott Key.
and this
Colonial Families in the U.S.”He was also, with his father, a “Prisoner of State” in the Civil War. He left issue.”
Francis Scott Key’s Grandson Arrested by Lincoln Government: As many of you probably know, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus as he saw fit, beginning on 27 April 1861. He considered any person who did not openly and unconditionally pledge his support to the war against the South guilty by his own definition of treason.
In his defense of his actions Lincoln stated that “...the public safety does require the suspension.” “Arrests by process of courts and arrests in cases of rebellion do not proceed altogether upon the same basis....In the latter case the arrests are made not so much for what has been done, as for what probably would be done.” “The man who stands by and says nothing when the peril of his Government is discussed cannot be misunderstood.”
(These quotations taken from his speech recorded in the American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1863; New York, New York; Appleton and Company 1870, pgs. 800-802)
In other words, what a man might do could get him arrested. And a man’s silence could also be a reason for arrest. Northern Congressmen realised the danger and spoke against such tyrannical opinions, to no avail.
Before the Maryland Legislature could consider secession, Lincoln interceded and made sure it wouldn’t pass any ordinances. Members of the Maryland legislature were imprisoned as well as other leading citiznes of Maryland. One of the men imprisoned by Lincoln’s edict was the editor of the Baltimore Exchange, member of the Baltimore Bar, and grandson of Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star Spangled Banner”!
Francis Key Howard was imprisoned at Ft. McHenry on 13 September 1861. While there he wrote:
“When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd and not pleasant coincidence. On that day, forty-seven years before, my grandfather, Mr. F.S. Key, the prisoner on a British ship, had witnessed the bombardment of Ft. McHenry. When on the following morning the hospital fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, the “Star Spangled Banner”. As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.”
What happened to Francis Key Howard? He and others were taken from Ft. McHenry and sent to Fortress Monroe. They were imprisoned because the Government “had in its possession ample evidence of the fact, that all who had been arrested had in some way violated the laws.”
From Fortress Monroe, Howard and others were shipped to Ft. Lafayette in New York Harbor and then to Fort Warren in Boston. They were not released until 27 November 1862.
Francis Key Howard wrote this upon his release:
“Each of them had determined at the outset to resist, to the uttermost, the dictatorship of Abraham Lincoln.”
“We came out of prison just as we had gone in, holding the same just scorn and detestation the despotism under which the country was prostrate, and with a stronger resolution than ever to oppose it by every means to which, as American freemen, we had the right to resort.”
All the information and quotations about Francis Key Howard were taken from the book, The American Bastille by John A. Marshall; Philadelphia, 1881;
Thomas W. Hartley Co. reprinted by the Crown Rights Book Co ., describes (in 767 pages) the false arrests of innocent citizens during Lincoln’s dictatorship, and their ordeal in the different prisons around the North.
Francis Key Howard wrote a detailed account about his arrest and imprisonment and appeals to the Lincoln Government for release.