January 8, 1862 (Tuesday): Lincoln Unmoved

Statue of S. Teackle Wallis in Baltimore

PHILADELPHIA, January 8, 1862.

His Excellency ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
President of the United States.
   SIR: I take the liberty of addressing you on behalf of and perhaps to save the life of one of my oldest and dearest friends.
Among the persons imprisoned at Fort Warren is S. Teackle Wallis, of Baltimore. He was a member of the Maryland Legislature opposed to your administration. I have known him intimately for nearly thirty years. He is a man of the highest personal honor who would rather die than say what was not exactly true. It is reported that he is arrested on suspicion of having prepared or been accessory to the preparation of an ordinance of secession for Maryland.
   I have seen under Mr. Wallis' own hand the statement that neither of these charges have the slightest foundation in truth. His opposition to your administration was open and manly. I have also his assurance in a letter to me of August 12, 1861, that he never would be engaged in any treasonable attempt to subvert the Government. This is his language:
I am as I have said the advocate of no policy of violence or revolution on the part of Maryland. She must submit to a fate she cannot mold and must practice the most difficult of virtues-endurance and forbearance. Such I am happy to say is the policy of all our leading men and I am gratified at having had much to do with shaping it.
   The length of time which has elapsed since he was imprisoned has afforded ample opportunity to investigate his case. He is a man of the feeblest constitution having scarcely known a well moment for the last twenty years. He is so delicate that he will probably die if kept this winter in confinement.
   I trust, sir, you will see fit to investigate this case on the score of humanity. I have not the honor of being known to you, but Reverdy Johnson and other distinguished men of Maryland know Mr. Wallis even better than I do and you will find on inquiry that I have exagerated nothing in this statement.
   I have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient servant, 


WM. H. DRAYTON. 

Official Records, Series II, Vol. 1, Part 1, Page 726.

Wallis, serving in the Maryland house of delegates, had opposed the Civil War while chairman of the committee on Federal relations.  Before the war he had practiced law, written editorials for the “Baltimore Exchange”, and had acted as a government emissary to Spain on the question of titles to Florida land holdings.  Drayton, arguing his friend’s case, was a Republican lawyer and the son of the revolutionary war hero Colonel William Drayton.  Despite his connections to the Republican Party and being the son of a famous patriot, Lincoln took no action on the letter and Wallis remained in prison without charges until being released without comment with other Maryland legislators in November of 1862.  It probably did not help that Drayton had a brother in Confederate service (although he also had one in the Union Army.) After the war, Wallis was provost of the University of Maryland.