Article on Civilian Arrests

Union Arrests in Montgomery County

Who Are These Guys?

The accompanying photograph was recently donated to the Montgomery County Historical Society. Apparently cut from a newspaper or other publication and placed in a scrapbook, the photograph appeared over the printed caption "Incidents of the War. Well boys, Who Let You Out?" The bearded "boys", left to right, are Robert W. Carter, John L. Dufief, George Peter and John Gassaway, all prominent citizens of Montgomery County. What had they been "in", when and why? The "in" was Old Capitol Prison in Washington D.C. and the "when" was February 1864. The "why" is another story, the answer to be found in the National archives in the Turner-Baker Papers of the Judge Advocate.

In August 1862, Associate Judge Advocate Major Levi C. Turner had been ordered to "arrest and imprison any person or persons who may be engaged, by act, speech, or writing, in discouraging volunteer enlistments, or in any way giving aid or comfort to the enemy, or in any other disloyal practice against the United States." With this directive, citizens of Montgomery County and elsewhere were subjected to arrest for a wide variety of "disloyal" activities. Reasons for such arrests included attending "secessionist" or "disloyal" meetings; harboring, feeding, or aiding rebels; attempting to retrieve runaway slaves; interfering with elections or any other "offense" that a Union military officer, the civilian provost marshal, or even a local citizen might interpret as anti-administration. Such was the case with the four "boys".

An unsigned and undated letter (but obviously February 12 or 13, 1864) in the Turner-Baker Papers named Carter, Dufief, Peter and Gassaway (plus two more, Joseph A. Taney and Mathew Fields) as strong supporters of the rebel cause and urged their arrests for a variety of offenses against the Federal Government. All were accused of aiding local rebels who frequently crossed the Potomac from Virginia via Gassaway´s (now Van Deventer) Island to visit friends and families in Montgomery County. In addition, the informant went into specific charges against each of the named citizens. Carter, a Rockville lawyer with two sons in the rebel army, completely outfitted one son with the best arms and a horse and continued to send money to a second son who had gone South before the war. (Another son, Robert W. Carter, Jr., Private, Company A, 1^st Maryland Cavalry, C.S.A., would die the next year as a prisoner in Camp Chase, Ohio). Dufief, who owned two large farms and a warehouse at Muddy Branch on the C&O Canal (and an "unflinching Unionist" according to the Washington Evening Star of September 17, 1861), not only sold General J.E.B. Stuart four or five horses for Union greenbacks when Stuart was en route to Gettysburg the previous year but also had his mowers cutting clover for three days prior to Stuart´s arrival in preparation for providing fodder for the cavalry mounts. (Dufief must have had quite a crystal ball in order to know three days in advance that Stuart would be crossing the Potomac at Rowser´s Ford when Stuart himself did not know at the time.) Furthermore, Dufief had boasted that he had fooled Union General Nathaniel Banks when his forces were occupying Montgomery County by pretending to be a strong Union supporter while making thousands of dollars from the hides and tallow from the cattle slaughtered for Banks´ troops. Peter, also a Rockville lawyer, was accused of sending money to his brother-on-law in Alabama. The informant had also heard that Gassaway kept a boat hidden near the Potomac crossing point for the use of rebel crossers and had earlier loaned one of his best horses to one of Stuart´s officers.

The unphotographed Taney and Fields were also fingered with specific charges. Taney´s house (near present day Cloppers) was frequently used as a safe house or rendezvous for rebels passing through the county. Fields, the editor of the Sentinel newspaper, "has done more than any other person in the place to corrupt people." Moreover, Fields met "last night" with a rebel visiting his wife in Rockville, providing him with a suit of clothes and was to meet him again "tonight" to give him boots and send him on his way.

The informant also reported that other rebel crossings were to take place on the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th (of February 1864) and urged the arrests of the named citizens and the capture of any rebels crossing on those nights. Donning his cloak and dagger, he also suggested that any Union officer who wanted to contact him for further information should, as a recognition signal, wear a piece of red flannel on his cap. (He did not, however, suggest any "dead drops" for the passage of such information.)

With the above information on hand, Major DeWitt C. Thompson, commanding the 2^nd Massachusetts Cavalry detachment at Muddy Branch, sprang into action. In a February 14 report to Chief of Staff Colonel J.H. Taylor, Thompson stated that he had arrested Peter, Carter, Dufief, Gassaway and Taney. While he had been unable to find and arrest Fields, Thompson stated that he had seen and heard enough about him to support his arrest and was hoping to arrest him soon. (Fields should not have been hard to find--his home and newspaper office were adjacent to the courthouse in Rockville. Fields would, however, be arrested in April--his second such arrest--and spend another seven weeks languishing without charge in Old Capitol.) Thompson, probably hoping to advance his military career, also requested that the Commanding General be told that he, Thompson, had "personally attended to their arrests ... and the posting of men along the river for better prevention of rebel crossings." (The latter was the primary purpose of the Muddy Branch detachment and was what he should have been doing anyway.)

The pictured four "boys" did not spend long in Old Capitol. All were men of some influence in the county and some had friends in high places in the Federal Government. For instance, Lincoln´s Attorney General Edward bates personally interceded with the Judge Advocate´s Office on behalf of Dufief. Secretary of War Edward Stanton himself ordered the release of Taney, a relative of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, noting on the release form that a copy should be provided to the Chief Justice. By February 17, all five of those arrested on the 14^th had, in a joint letter to Joseph H. Bradley, a prominent Washington attorney, requested that he represent them. As a result of these moves, all five were, upon taking the oath, released by February 21^st. This one week stay in prison must not have been too uncomfortable for them, however, since Carter (in poorer health than the others) went so far as to request from prison Superintendent William P. Wood that he be permitted to stay an extra night in Old Capitol in order to be released with his friends the next day (perhaps in order to pose with the others for the joint "four boys" photograph).

The arrests of these men had not been reported in the local newspaper. Matthew Fields noted in the Sentinel of February 5 that an order had been handed down by Union officials in Washington prohibiting the "publication of names of any parties sent to Old Capitol Prison." Until then Fields had consistently published such arrests of citizens of the county in his weekly newspaper.

This short incarceration apparently did not adversely affect the post-war careers of these uncharged, untried and unconvicted felons. Robert W. Carter remained the Register of Wills in Montgomery County and George Peter became a State Senator. Dufief remained a large and prosperous landowner and John Gassaway continued to be a successful merchant in Germantown. Joseph A. Taney would become County Clerk and Matthew Fields would remain owner and editor of the Sentinel until his death in August 1871, still unreconstructed.

Who was the unidentified informant? We still do not know. The first to come to mind would be Federal Provost Marshal Mortimore Moulden or County Clerk James Henning, both of Rockville and both willing to testify against Matthew Fields when he was first arrested in 1862. Perhaps it was a form of revenge by one of those Rockville citizens picked up by J.E.B. Stuart´s forces en route to Gettysburg in late June 1863 and marched to Brookeville where they were paroled and released to straggle back home. Or it could have been any one of a number of pro-Northern citizens with an ax to grind against their pro-Southern neighbors.

In this case, little harm was done to the lives and careers of those arrested. It remains, however, a well documented example of the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of citizens which took place during the war in Montgomery County and to a large extent throughout the state of Maryland.

Charles Jacobs, The Maryland Line u.d., p. 2