Mr. Fox's visit carries it to a day in March. I learn he is a near connection of a member of the Cabinet. My connection with the Commissioners and yourself was superinduced by a conversation with Justice Nelson. He informed me of your strong disposition in favor of peace, and that you were oppressed with a demand of the Comnfissioners of the Confederate States for a reply to their first letter, and that you desired to avoid it if possible at that time. I told him I might, perhaps, be of some service in arranging the difficulty. I came to your office entirely at his request, and without the knowledge of either of the Commissioners. Your depression was obvious to both Judge Nelson and myself. I was gratified at the character of the counsels you were desirous of pursuing, and much impressed with your observation that a civil war might be prevented by the success of my mediation. You read a letter of Mr. Weed, to show how irksome and responsible the withdrawal of troops from Sumter was. A portion of my communication to Judge Crawford on the 15th March, was founded upon these remarks, and the pledge to evacuate Sumter is less forcible than the words you employed. Those words were: Before this letter reaches you, (a proposed letter by me to I'resident Davis,) Sumter will have been evacuated. The Commissioners who received those communications conclude they have been abused and over-reached. The Montgomery Government hold the same opinion. The Commissioners have supposed that my communications were with you, and upon the hypothesis were prepared to arraign you before the country in connection with the President. I placed a peremptory prohibition upon this as being contrary to the terms of my communications with them. I pledged myself to them to communicate information upon what I considered as the best authority, and they were to confide in the ability of myself, aided by Judge Nelson, to determine upon the credibility of my informant. I think no candid man who will read over what I have written, and considers for a moment what is going on at Sumter, but will agree that the equivocating conduct of the Administration, as measured and interpreted in connection with these promises, is the proximate cause of the great calamity. I have a profound conviction that the telegrams of the 8th of April of General Beauregard, and of the 10th of April of General Walker, the Secretary of War, can be referred to nothing else than their belief that there has been systematic duplicity praticed on them through me. It is under an impressive sense of the weight of this responsibility that I submit to you these things for your explanation. Very respectfully, JOHN A. CAMPBELL, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, United States. HON. WM. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State. WASHINGTON, April 20, 1861. SIR :-I enclose you a letter, corresponding very nearly with one I addressed to you one week ago, (13th April,) to which I have not had any reply. The letter is simply one of inquiry in reference to facts concerning which, I think, I am entitled to an explanation. I have not adopted any opinion in reference to them which may not be modified by explanation; nor have I affirmed in that letter, nor do I in this, any conclusion of my own unfavorable to your integrity in the whole transaction. All that I have said and mean to say is, that an explanation is due from you to myself. I will not say what I shall do in case this request is not complied with, but I am justified in saying that I shall feel at liberty to place these letters before any person who is entitled to ask an explanation of myself. Very respectfully, JOHN A. CAMPBELL, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, United States. HON. WM. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State. No reply has been made to this letter. April 24, 1861. J. MY MARYLAND. BY JAMES R. RANDALL. The despot's heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland ! Avenge the patriotic gore That flecked the streets of Baltimore, And be the battle-queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland ! Hark to an exiled son's appeal, Maryland! My Mother-State, to thee I kneel, Maryland ! For life and death, for woe and weal, Thy peerless chivalry reveal, And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel, Maryland! My Maryland! Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes-she burns! she'll come! she'll come! Ex parte K. THE MERRYMAN CASE. DECISION OF CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY. JOHN MERRYMAN. Before the Chief Justice of the Supreme {Court Court of the United States, at Chambers. The application in this case for a Writ of Habeas Corpus is made to me under the 14th section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which renders effectual for the citizen the Constitutional Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus. That Act gives to the Courts of the United States, as well as to each Justice of the Supreme Court, and to every District Judge, power to grant Writs of Habeas Corpus for the purpose of an inquiry into the cause of commitment. The petition was presented to me at Washington under the impression that I would order the prisoner to be brought before me there; but as he was confined in Fort McHenry, at the City of Baltimore, which is in my Circuit, I resolved to hear it in the latter city, as obedience to the Writ, under such circumstances, would not withdraw General Cadwalader, who had him in charge, from the limits of his military command. The petition presents the following case: The petitioner resides in Maryland, in Baltimore County. While peaceably in his own house, with his family, it was at two o'clock on the morning of the 25th of May, 1861, entered by an armed force, professing to act under military orders. He was then compelled to rise from his bed, taken into custody, and conveyed to Fort McHenry, where he is imprisoned by the commanding officer, without warrant from any lawful authority. The Commander of the Fort, General George Cadwalader, by whom he is detained in confinement, in his return to the Writ, does not deny any of the facts alleged in the petition. He states that the prisoner was arrested by order of General Keim, of Pennsylvania, and conducted as aforesaid to Fort McHenry by his order, and placed in his (General Cadwalader's) custody, to be there detained by him as a prisoner. A copy of the warrant or order, under which the prisoner was arrested, was demanded by his counsel, and refused. And it is not alleged in the return that any specific act, constituting any offence against the laws of the United States, has been charged against him upon oath; but he appears to have been arrested upón general charges of treason and rebellion, without proof, and without giving the names of the witnesses, or specifying the acts which, in the judgment of the military officer, constituted these crimes. And having the prisoner thus in custody upon these vague and unsupported accusations, he refuses to obey the Writ of Habeas Corpus, upon the ground that he is duly authorized by the President to suspend it. The case, then, is simply this :-A military officer residing in Pennsylvania, issues an order to arrest a citizen of Maryland, upon vague and indefinite charges, without any proof, so far as appears. Under this order, his house is entered in the night; he is seized as a prisoner, and conveyed to Fort McHenry, and there kept in close confinement. And when a Habeas Corpus is served on the commanding officer requiring him to produce the prisoner before a Justice of the Supreme Court, in order that he may examine into the legality of the imprisonment, the answer of the officer is that he is authorized by the President to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus at his discretion, and, in the exercise of that discretion, suspends it in this case, and on that ground refuses obedience to the Writ. As the case comes before me, therefore, I understand that the Presi dent not only claims the right to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus himself, at his discretion, but to delegate that discretionary power to a military officer, and to leave it to him to determine whether he will or will not obey Judicial process that may be served upon him. No official notice has been given to the Courts of Justice, or to the public, by proclamation or otherwise, that the President claimed this power, and had exercised it in the manner stated in the return. And I certainly listened to it with some surprise, for I had supposed it to be one of those points of Constitutional law upon which there was no difference of opinion, and that it was admitted on all hands that the Privilege of the Writ could not be suspended, except by Act of Congress. When the conspiracy of which Aaron Burr was the head became so |