Raynors HCA 2015-02
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/19/2015
MAY, Henry (1816-1866) Democrat. U.S. Representative from Maryland 4th District, 1853-55, 1861-63. Autograph Letter Signed, “H. May” 3p. octavo, January 16, 1862, Washington, with franked cover addressed to a political prisoner J.Teakle Wallis, in the “Care of Col. Dimick Fort Warren near Boston, Mass.” with Congress cds, it reads in part: “...I have just recd yr note & will at once send the documents you mention. The only copy I could obtain of the Message & accompanying documents I sent to one of our friends around you (Warfield I. Hewitt)... You must know that I was notified not to correspond with any of you & soon after Congress met I applied at War Dept for leave to send papers or documents receiving no answer I got a friend to see Genl. McClellan who hesitated...but as he did not refuse but thought it right...I beg to be most kindly remembered to all....” More. VG. S(evern) T(eackle) Wallis was a member of the Maryland House of Delegates and was arrested September 17, 1861 and interred at Fort Warren until July, 1862. In April 1861, S(evern) T(eackle) Wallis was elected to the lower House of Delegates of Maryland in the General Assembly of Maryland, and took an active part in the special proceedings of the Maryland Legislature, called into special session that Spring by Gov. Thomas H. Hicks, as the authority of the Governor of Maryland at Frederick instead of the state capital at Annapolis which was then occupied by Massachusetts and New York militia under the command of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, deciding on the issue of secession and the state's relationship to the pending crisis and the forming war policies of President Abraham Lincoln. He was chairman of the committee on Federal relations, and made himself obnoxious to the Federal authorities by his reports, which were adopted by the Legislature, and which took strong ground against the possibilities of Civil War, as well as against the then prevailing "doctrine of military necessity". In September 12th of that year, four months after Butler's occupation of the state's major city, Wallis was arrested with 27 other members of the Maryland Legislature and other citizens of the city and state (including the new police marshal George Proctor Kane, and newly elected reform mayor George William Brown), and imprisoned for more than fourteen months in Fort McHenry, Fort Lafayette, and Fort Warren for not citing a Union Oath before a seccession vote. He was finally released by November, 1862, without conditions and without being informed of the official cause of his arrest.
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