Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 29.djvu/284

 268 Southern Historical Society Papers.

themselves no little amount of credit for its success." Of this epi- sode Colonel Lamon, the friend and biographer of Lincoln, said: " Mr. Lincoln soon learned to regret his midnight ride. His friends reproached him, his enemies taunted him. He was convinced that he had made a grave mistake in yielding to the solicitations of a professional spy and of friends too easily alarmed."

A REIGN OF TERROR.

The work of oppressing the citizens of Baltimore began as soon as General Butler had established himself, and a reign of terror be- gan. Spies and informers abounded. One of General Butler's sol- diers at the Relay had a case of cholera morbus. He assumed that the man had been poisoned with strychnine and he threatened to put an agent armed with poison in every family in the State. Leading- citizens were arrested and dragged from their beds at midnight and sent to prison, without knowing the nature of the charges against them. The Chief Justice of the United States was defied and his authority scoffed at by military underlings. The Mayor of the city, the Marshal of Police and the Police Commissioners were all sub- jected to arrest, and military rule succeeded in the city government. Gentlemen whose only offense was that they were members of the General Assembly, were hunted down like criminals, and some of them sent to a Massachusetts prison. To secure the arrest of a man no evidence was necessary. Even children and nurse girls on the street were unsafe. If a little girl happened to wear a white apron with a red binding, it was considered a display of Confederate colors and an act of disloyalty. General Dix, who took command July 24, said it required 10,000 men t3 keep Baltimore in subjection, and he put the city under the heavy guns of three fortifications. All over the State men were arrested upon the information of spies, and subjected to hardships and indignities. Judge Carmichael while sit- ting in his court at Easton, was assaulted by soldiers and a provost marshal, with his deputies, and dragged bleeding from the bench.

CHRISTIAN EMMERICH.

Christian Emmerich, 1431 West Lombard street, now upward of eighty years of age, and one of the influential members of St. Paul's Methodist Church, South, had about as severe an experience of mili- tary rule in Baltimore city during the Civil War as any other citizen in those trying times. Mr. Emmerich was sent to Albany peniten- tiary on the charge of conveying information to the enemy; his house,