HEADQUARTERS MOUNTAIN DEPARTMENT,
Middletown, June 25, 1862.

Honorable EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.:

Walter Cool, Matthew Corbitt, Frederick Chewning and Harrison C. Rollins were recently sentenced to death by military commission at Clarksburg. The last named called himself Captain Spriggs but I am informed is not the man. The sentence is not yet approved. Have you any orders in these cases?

J. C. FREMONT,

Major-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS, Fort Monroe, Va., June 25, 1862.

Honorable EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.

SIR: In October last I was authorized* by the Secretary of State to arrest Judge R. B. Carmichael, of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, if I should deem it expedient, and if necessary in his own court. In the communication by which this authority was conferred was inclosed a printed memorial addressed to the Legislature of Maryland, signed by him and expressing the most disloyal sentiments. I did not on full consideration deem it advisable to make the arrest at that time.

Soon afterwards a military arrest was made on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in a county in Judge Carmichael's district by an officer of the Second Regiment of Delaware Volunteers. At the next term of the court the judge charged the grand jury that it was their duty to present all persons concerned in such arrest and all persons who had given information on which such arrest had been made. His charges in other counties as well as this were of a most disloyal and offensive character, and it was represented to me by Governor Hicks and the most respectable citizens of the Eastern Shore that the hostile feeling to the Government prevailing there was kept up by himself and a few associates. Under the charge referred to the Honorable Henry H. Goldsborough, president of the Senate of Maryland, and several officers of the Second Delaware Regiment were presented by the grand jury and I was informed that bills of indictment had been found against them. The trial of the honorable Mr. Goldsborough was expected to take place in the month of May last and four officers of the Delaware regiment were summoned as witnesses in his behalf. They came to me and expressed a great unwillingness to obey the summons as they had been presented by the grand jury and apprehended that they would be arrested if they made their appearance in the county.

It was under these circumstances and after the repeated and earnest solicitations of ion men in Judge Carmichael's judicial district that I dispatched Mr. McPhail, deputy provost-marshal of the Baltimore military police, with four policemen to Easton, in Talbot County, where the court was in session, to accompany the four officers who were summoned as witnesses, with instructions to arrest Judge Carmichael if on consultation with the honorable Mr. Goldsborough it should be thought expedient. He bore a letter from me to Mr. Goldsborough+ requesting him (Mr. G.) to advise as to the propriety of making the arrest.

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*See Seward to Dix, October 3, 1861, Vol. II, this Series, p. 85.

+See Vol. III, this Series, p. 576.

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