Civil War
Prior to the Civil War, Merryman was a 3rd lieutenant in the Baltimore County Troops. By 1861 he was a 1st lieutenant in the Baltimore County Horse Guards. Following the Pratt Street Riot in Baltimore, Governor Hicks ordered Merryman to aid in the destruction of several bridges north of Baltimore to prevent troops from Pennsylvania from marching through Baltimore and inciting riots.
On May 25, 1861, Merryman was arrested at his home in Cockeysville by Union troops, indicted for treason, and confined in Fort McHenry. Merryman petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, which was granted by Chief Justice Taney, but the writ was disobeyed by General George Cadwalader, the arresting officer, under orders from President Lincoln, even though Taney cited Cadwalader for contempt. Taney declared Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional (see Ex parte Merryman).
While Merryman was in jail awaiting a hearing, Taney had furniture and home-cooked meals brought to him in his cell. Merryman later named one of his sons Roger B. Taney Merryman in the Chief Justice's honor.
Merryman was State Treasurer of Maryland from 1870 to 1872.
Read more about this topic: John Merryman
Famous quotes by civil war:
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)