In the past there were arguments about whether Taney issued the writ to General Cadwalader sitting as a judge of the District Court or whether Taney issued it as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The latter is correct, though he did file it in the District Court in Baltimore so that Cadwalader could have easy access to it.
Yes, that was CJ Taney acting as Chief Justice in-chambers. I generally terminate any dispute on that by producing a link to Taney's handwritten opinion. That, combined with the Baltimore Sun quote is rather conclusive evidence. One very minor correction — you mistakenly cited the District Court rather than the Circuit Court.
That was also mentioned in a 1935 book by Carl Brent Swisher (which I recently obtained a 1961 reprint of). The book was entitled, "Roger B. Taney."
I have a first reprint edition of Swisher's book from June 1936. I also have an 1876 copy of Samuel Tyler's Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, LL.D., 2nd Ed.; and a 1965 first edition of Walker Lewis' Without Fear or Favor. All provide interesting history.
As an interesting tidbit of Civil War era history, there is E. Merton Coulter, William Montague Browne (1967). An interesting biography, sort of. Browne was an aide-de-camp to Jefferson Davis, Assistant Secretary of State, and later the first Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Georgia. Browne arrived from Ireland and the bio of his time in America was researched before having folks in Europe research his time there. They could not track his existence prior to his arrival in the States. Nobody knows who the heck he was.
I hadn't heard about Cadwalader's mansion having been burned down.
On the very slight possibility that you have not seen it, there is Lamon's third book, The Life of Abraham Lincoln as President, A personal account by Lincoln's Bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, Edited by Bob O'Connor, discovered in 2007 and published in 2010. Lamon recited the conclusion of the Merryman opinion and continued at page 341:
Mr. Lincoln could not be made to see that it was his duty to enforce the laws in that way. His highest duty, he thought, was to suspend the technicalities of the law and if need be, to totally disregard all law on the statute book if necessary to preserve the life of the nation. This decision of the chief justice at this time was most embarrassing to the war powers then being exercised. The legal operations of the civil authorities had not been suspended by the declaration of martial law, and apprehended conflicts of authority would greatly embarrass the military operations of the government. At no point was a greater field for such obstruction than in Baltimore and Maryland. After due consideration, the administration determined upon the arrest of the chief justice. A warrant or order was issued for his arrest. Then arose the question of service. Who would make the arrest and where should be his imprisonment?It was finally determined to place the order of arrest in the hands of the United States Marshal of the District of Columbia. This was done by the president with instruction by him to use the marshal’s own discretion about making the arrest unless he should receive further orders from Mr. Lincoln. This writ was never executed, and the marshal never regretted the discretionary power delegated to him in the exercise of his official duty. The power of the president for making arbitrary arrests became at this time a question of greater importance.
Of course, Lamon was the marshal at the time.
I did a quick online search this morning of newspapers of that time in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America web site. I wanted to find additional details, if there were any, to those in the two short articles I quoted above. I had found those two short articles on rolls of microfilm.
The New York Daily Tribune of April 23, 1860 reported a lot of what was going on in Maryland at the time in columns 4, 5, and 6. Here was the little it said about Cadwalader's mansion [Link]. If your mouse has a wheel, you can easily use the wheel to enlarge the newspaper to make the text more readable, or I gather that you can use other means to enlarge the paper as well.
The residence of Gen. George Cadwalader, of Philadelphia, at Magnolia, in Harford County, nineteen miles north of Baltimore, was burned by the same party, who seemed to be anxious to glut their vengeance upon the property of a man whose only fault was that he was true to the Constitution and the Union of his country.
I was not aware of Lamon's third book, thanks. I do have Lamon's "Recollections of Abraham Lincoln." It doesn't say anything about Taney that I could find, but it did discuss Lamon's visit with the Governor of South Carolina in March, 1861. I do have George William Brown's (the Mayor of Baltimore) book, "Baltimore & The Nineteenth of April, 1861," where Taney mentioned to Brown that Taney's "own imprisonment had been a matter of consultation."
Brown's book also says the following:
The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, by order of the President, without the sanction of an Act of Congress, which had not then been given, was one of the memorable events of the war.On the 4th of May, 1861, Judge Giles, of the United States District Court of Maryland, issued a writ of habeas corpus to Major Morris, then in command of Fort McHenry, to discharge a soldier who was under age. Major Morris refused to obey the writ.
. . .
On the 25th of May, Mr. John Merryman, of Baltimore County, was arrested by order of General Keim, of Pennsylvania, and confined in Fort McHenry. The next day (Sunday, May 26th) his counsel, Messrs. George M. Gill and George H. Williams, presented a petition for the writ of habeas corpus to Chief Justice Taney, who issued the writ immediately ...
My understanding is that Judge Giles had advised Merryman's attorney that he should go to Washington to talk to Taney about Merryman's case, which the attorney apparently did. Giles had run into that May 4 blockage of habeas corpus, and knew that he [Giles] couldn't overcome it. Indeed even Taney couldn't overcome it, but Taney's brilliant Ex Parte Merryman order gives me goosebumps.