long hold them as prisoners; and, when liberated, they will immediately reassemble and take their action.  And precisely the same if we simply disperse them:  they will immediately reassemble in some other place.  I therefore conclude that it is only left to the commanding general to watch and await their action, which, if it shall be to arm their people against the United States, he is to adopt the most prompt and efficient means to counteract, even if necessary to the bombardment of their cities; and, in the extremest necessity, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.”

Two days later the President formally authorized General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus along his military lines, or in their vicinity, if resistance should render it necessary.  Arrivals of additional troops enabled the General to strengthen his military hold on Annapolis and the railroads; and on May 13 General B.F.  Butler, with about one thousand men, moved into Baltimore and established a fortified camp on Federal Hill, the bulk of his force being the Sixth Massachusetts, which had been mobbed in that city on April 19.  Already, on the previous day, the bridges and railroad had been repaired, and the regular transit of troops through the city reestablished.

Under these changing conditions the secession majority of the Maryland legislature did not venture on any official treason.  They sent a committee to interview the President, vented their hostility in spiteful reports and remonstrances, and prolonged their session by a recess.  Nevertheless, so inveterate was their disloyalty and plotting against the authority of the Union, that four months later it became necessary to place the leaders under arrest, finally to head off their darling project of a Maryland secession ordinance.

One additional incident of this insurrectionary period remains to be noticed.  One John Merryman, claiming to be a Confederate lieutenant, was arrested in Baltimore for enlisting men for the rebellion, and Chief Justice Taney of the United States Supreme Court, the famous author of the Dred Scott decision, issued a writ of habeas corpus to obtain his release from Fort McHenry.  Under the President’s orders, General Cadwalader of course declined to obey the writ.  Upon this, the chief justice ordered the general’s arrest for contempt, but the officer sent to serve the writ was refused entrance to the fort.  In turn, the indignant chief justice, taking counsel of his passion instead of his patriotism, announced dogmatically that “the President, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, cannot suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, nor authorize any military officer to do so”; and some weeks afterward filed a long written opinion in support of this dictum.  It is unnecessary here to quote the opinions of several eminent jurists who successfully refuted his labored argument, nor to repeat the vigorous analysis with which, in his special message to Congress of July 4, President Lincoln vindicated his own authority.