Radio Script #643

Little Talks on Common Things

February 28, 1965

In 1965 as we observe the 100th anniversary of the final year of the Civil War, it is well to be reminded how controversial that war was, not merely between North and South, but among northerners themselves. Southern sympathizers were numerous, not only in the border states of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, but in New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and even in New Hampshire and Maine.

As all readers of Civil War history know, the first crucial point of trouble was the city of Baltimore, through which the hastily mustered New England regiments had to pass on their way to the defense of the national capital. The first Union troops to reach Baltimore were a Massachusetts regiment. A mob of southern sympathizers attacked it with clubs and stones, and then with firearms. A dozen men were killed on both sides. The angry secessionists vowed that not another northern soldier would pass alive through the city.

But they had not reckoned on the intrepidity and determination of a northern general who had graduated from Colby College in Waterville in 1838: Benjamin F. Butler, who was destined to become the most controversial general on either side in the Civil War. Butler, then a Massachusetts lawyer, was trying a case in court when he received orders to have his Sixth Massachusetts Infantry report at Faneuil Hall the next morning. Securing a postponement of the case, Butler started at once to assemble the regiment, whose companies were spread over four counties. The next day Butler got Col. Jones off for Washington with that Sixth Regiment, and on the following day Butler himself followed with the Eighth.

Butler fooled the Baltimore secessionists by taking his troops to Annapolis and by-passing Baltimore altogether. Before the rest of disorderly Maryland knew what was happening, Butler’s regiments were in Washington. But Ben Butler was by no means through with the insurrectionist city. He and another Union general soon cleared up the place, put the southern leaders under arrest, and made it possible for future regiments to pass through Baltimore without trouble.

One of those regiments was the Third Maine. Commanded by a man who was to become a celebrated general of the war, O.O. Howard, the Third Maine was largely a Kennebec County regiment. It was especially close to the hearts of Waterville people because its Company G was composed almost entirely of Waterville men. That company had been recruited by the two Heath brothers, William and Francis, and when it marched off for Washington, William Heath was its captain and Francis its first lieutenant.

The official history of all Maine regiments in the Civil War, a book entitled “Maine in the War for the Union”, says of the Third Maine: “Ten rounds of ball cartridges were given each man previous to passing through Baltimore. No occasion occurred, however, requiring their use, and the regiment arrived without adventure in Washington on June 7.”

The writer of that account had overlooked an item in the Baltimore Sun, published on that very day, June 7, 1861. It said: “While the Third Maine was passing the corner of Hanover and Pratt Streets, a man drew a revolver and pointed it at the soldiers, as though he was going to shoot, but a police officer seized him and carried him off.”

The Baltimore riots touched off action by the Lincoln administration, the legality of which historians are still arguing about a hundred years afterward. That was the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the beginning of a whole epidemic of arbitrary arrests that spread through every northern state.

Since the days of Magna Carta in the early thirteenth century, English-speaking people had insisted on freedom from arbitrary arrest and the right to be hailed before a court or judge to determine the validity of arrest. But many British monarchs had flouted that freedom in war time, and it had not applied immediately in many places under martial law. So, under what he and his advisors deemed the necessity to protect the Union from traitors within its own midst, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.

The defeat at Bull Run in July, 1861 aroused not only the southern sympathizers in the north, but also the peace lovers who wanted the war to stop anyhow. It was not long before dissension was rife even in northern New England. The first place to be hit was Concord, N.H. In that state capital the Democratic Standard was a newspaper that opposed the war. As were many editors of that era, the Standard’s chief was a man of biting sarcasm. It was bad enough for him to use his pen to deride the federal administration in far-off Washington, but folks felt he went much too far when he attacked the First New Hampshire Regiment following Bull Run.

The Standard referred to “a certain New England regiment” that had mutinied before leaving for Washington because the men had been denied Sunday passes to visit their lady friends. Again the paper said: “Our southern papers are filled with heart-sickening accounts of the murders and robberies which individuals in Old Abe’s Mob are perpetrating on southern people. Innocent women and children have been shot on their own doorsteps. No wonder the northern soldiers run when the honest men of the South march against them.”

When loyal Union men read those words, they angrily gathered in front of the office of the Democratic Standard. The gathering soon became a violent mob. They broke into the building, demolished the office, threw type, desks, paper and ink into the street, and set the refuse afire. In front of the office they hung a sign, “The Doom of Traitors”.

In a few days the disorder had spread to Maine. The Bangor Democrat was published by Marcellus Emory, who was strongly opposed to the war. His articles had for some time irritated the loyal Unionists of Bangor, but had aroused no violence until Emory’s opponents learned what had happened in Concord. If an unwanted newspaper could be abolished in Concord, certainly the same thing could be done in Bangor.

On August 12, 1861 Emory finished printing his weekly paper and left his office to have dinner at his boarding house half a mile away. While he was eating, he heard the fire bells ring and ran out to see where the blaze was. There was no fire, but in front of his printing office was all its contents strewn over the street — press, type, paper, furniture — everything. The square was filled with more than a thousand people. Just as Emory arrived, a match was touched to a big mass of his property piled in the middle of the street. Sighting Emory, the crowd began to yell: “Hang him! Tar and feather him!” But his friends gathered around him and escorted him to safety. As he left Bangor, the editor made a comment that should have reminded his enemies of the gallant Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who had been killed by a mob 24 years earlier in Alton, Illinois, for the very same reason — publishing articles that aroused local resentment. This is what Emory said: “Thus hath freedom of the press been stricken down in Maine.”

It was not unsympathetic newspapers, but rather the arbitrary arrests that followed suspension of the writ of habeas corpus that caused the greatest resentment and criticism of the Lincoln administration. Lincoln explained to Congress that, since the laws that he had taken his oath to execute faithfully were being violently resisted and because the Constitution clearly provided that the writ could be suspended in case of rebellion, he had acted. The Congress was by no means unanimous in their acceptance of the President’s explanation. When Senator Trumbull of Lincoln’s own state of Illinois said, “I do not agree that the administration has unlimited power and can do what it pleases with our laws that protect citizens from arbitrary arrest”, Senator Lot Morrill of Maine arose and shouted, “I heartily agree with the Senator from Illinois.”

As was to be expected, the arrests began in Maryland, where southern sympathy was most loudly expressed. Some of Baltimore’s leading citizens, including the mayor, were taken into custody and hustled off to one of the federal forts. Soon the practice spread to New York, where bankers, merchants, aldermen, policemen, and even clergymen were picked up and sent to Fort Lafayette out in the harbor. Every ship that arrived in New York, Boston, or other northern port, was stopped before it could dock and discharge passengers. Its list was carefully scrutinized and many an innocent passenger was detained as a suspected Confederate spy.

One would scarcely expect a small village in the interior of Maine to be the first place in our state hit by the mad epidemic of arrests, but the first such occurance in Maine came in the little town of Freedom. There lived Robert Eliot, who had been an unsuccessful Peace candidate for the Maine senate and who became openly defiant. He raised and armed a company in Freedom and boldly announced that they would prevent all enlistments and any collecting of war taxes. Secretary of War Cameron ordered the U.S. Marshall in Portland to go to Freedom and arrest Eliot. Although Eliot announced that the marshall would be lynched if he showed up in Freedom, the marshall accomplished his job and took Eliot to Fort Lafayette.

There the man from Freedom spent four months as a prisoner. Finally Maine’s governor, Israel Washburn, wrote the Secretary of War that while he considered Eliot’s arrest justified, he could see no point in detaining him longer. So Eliot returned home and held his peace during the remainder of the war.

The authorities struck next at Yarmouth, where Cyrus Sargent, a boat builder, denounced the war and the government in Washington. The marshall arrested Sargent, but because the fellow had so much support in Portland, it was thought best not to put him on a train for Boston at the Portland station, but to take the prisoner to Saco and catch the train there. But before the marshall and his prisoner reached Saco, Sargent sympathizers caught up with them and rescued their man. But two weeks later the marshall arrested Sargent again and deposited him safely in Fort Lafayette. There the Yarmouth man spent six months before his release.

We have no more time today for further stories about northern resistance to the Civil War. I think I have told you enough to make you realize that not even in strongly Republican Maine were all the people willing to support the war policy of the man whom we now call our greatest president.

Year: 1965