ISAAC C. W. POWELL, ESQ.

ISAAC C. W. POWELL was born in Sussex County, Dela

ware, December 31st, 1823. In 1842, he entered Union College, New York, under Dr. Nott and Dr. Potter, and graduated, 1845, delivering the valedictory of his class. In 1846, he attended the law-school at Yale College, New Haven. After leaving this school, and studying some months in the office of John Glenn (afterward Judge of the Circuit Court of the United States) in Baltimore, he opened an office for the practice of his profession in Baltimore, adjoining that of Hon. James L. Bartol, for many years a Justice of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, and now its Chief Justice; with whom he had always been on the kindest and most intimate terms of friendship. From Baltimore, Mr. Powell was called, in January, 1848, to his home on the beautiful Wye River, in Talbot County, Maryland, by the illness of his father. He reached home only in time to close his parent's eyes in death, and pay the last sad offices to his memory. He was obliged, as one of his father's executors, to remain in Talbot County, to settle his estate, and therefore closed his office in Baltimore, where he had commenced his professional career with the most flattering prospects. He then opened his law-office in Easton, in 1848. In 1849, he was chosen a member of the Legislature of Maryland, and served with credit in that session in which the reform of the old Constitution was the great issue; and, as a member of the Judiciary Committee of the House, contributed in no small degree to the passage of that measure. He married, in 1850, Miss Lucy A. Barker, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and settled down in the practice of his profession at Easton; from which he has never been allured by political preferment, although many

opportunities offered. In 1859, he was elected State's Attor ney for Talbot County, to serve for four years.

In 1861 and the early part of 1862, citizens were arrested in his county, without cause, by the military miscreants who ruled the hour. The Constitution of the State and of the United States were violated in open day, by those acting under the authority of the sword and the bayonet. The armory of the State at Easton was sacked and rifled by a company of United States soldiers on a peaceful Sunday afternoon; and public and private property carried off by those who would have been treated as ruffians and robbers, but for their epaulets. One old citizen, who dared to deny the falsehood of a political speaker, was seized at midnight and dragged from the side of his wife, to spend a week of unjust imprisonment in a camp, and subjected to every kind of indignity and inconvenience. Slaves, who were then recognized as property alike by the Federal and State laws, were taken from their owners (women and children as well as men) in scores, under the pretence of enlistment in the United States military service. Negro soldiers were quartered on the county, and sent about in the most insulting manner to the residences of the citizens, to annoy and rob them. Provost Marshals were appointed, and spies and eavesdroppers and detectives hunted down, everywhere, those who opposed the Lincoln dynasty.

Indeed, so many and grievous were the outrages of the minions of the new power, that the grand jury, under the ruling of the Hon. Richard B. Carmichael, Judge of the Circuit Court, presented a number of the most prominent offenders, who were indicted, and process issued by the court for their apprehension. At the session of the court in May, 1862, they (being out of the county) had not been taken under the writ issued. By preconcert and collusion with Samuel T. Hopkins, Clerk of the Court, (who was one of the first of the men of Talbot to rush to Baltimore, after the affair of the 19th of April, to repel the Federal soldiers in their passage through that city, but became afterward one

of the most bitter of those who sided with that cause,) these men came to Easton on the 25th of May, 1862, bringing with them a certain J. K. McPhail, of Baltimore, a maker of hats, as a sort of Marshal under the new order of things. The order had gone forth from the petty powers in Baltimore, borrowed from their superiors in Washington, to arrest those who resisted the aggressions upon civil liberty in Talbot County. The faithful, who had been directed to arrest Judge Carmichael for the honest discharge of his duty in his instructions to the grand jury, resolved to arrest Mr. Powell.

Accordingly, on the 28th day of May, 1862, while the court was in session, and a cause on trial, in which Mr. Powell was engaged as counsel, McPhail, with a body of police, followed by a party of petty military officers, entered the courtroom, marched to the Judge's chair, and, without exhibiting any authority, attempted to arrest him on the bench. The Judge, not knowing the persons, demanded their authority. McPhail said he was Marshal of Police in Baltimore, but declined to show any voucher for this or any order for Judge Carmichael's arrest. His policemen drew their pistols. The Judge called for the Sheriff, who being absent from his place, ordered him to be sent for by the crier at the door. He did not appear. One of the coarse villains then following, or rather leading MePhail, rushed on the Judge, who spurned him with his foot, as he would have done any other cur. Immediately the other rascals (McPhail among them) sprang upon the Judge from behind, and struck him many blows upon the head with their pistols, completely stunning him, and prostrating him on the floor. He was then dragged out of the court-room into an entry, (where another citizen was fired upon by the party and others assaulted;) but the chief ruffian, becoming alarmed at the extent of the proceeding, had him brought back into the court-room, his head covered with wounds, the scars of which he must bear to his grave, and the blood streaming from his venerable locks, and covering his garments to his feet. A company of one hundred or

more soldiers had been ordered from Baltimore for the occa

sion; and the brave McPhail did not make his onslaught upon the Judge until they were at the suburbs of the town. McPhail then ordered the arrest of Mr. Powell.

The Judge and Mr. Powell, with two other citizens arrested by these lawless wretches, were taken on board the steamer, which was guarded by the troops, and were placed in Fort McHenry the same night, or rather in the dirty loft of one of the stables within the enclosure of the Fort, where some twenty-five others were imprisoned and guarded. The apartment in which they were placed was used for the purposes of eating and lodging, with no proper ventilation, and with the effluvia from filthy soldiers' quarters underneath. poisoning the atmosphere. From this stable-room, noisome with stench and filth, the Judge and Mr. Powell were, by the intervention of friends, removed in a short time to more comfortable quarters. The improvement was, however, very slight; for they, with four other prisoners, were confined in a room about eight by ten feet in size. Here they remained from the 1st of June to the 10th of July, and the season being hot and unwholesome, but for the kindness of General Morris, commandant, who gave them on their parole the privilege of walking about the grounds, they would probably have perished.

On the 10th of July, they were summarily sent to Fort Lafayette, where a coarse, ill-tempered creature, named Wood, and wearing the epaulets of a Lieutenant, was in charge. This low-bred, cowardly fellow took from them their money, watches, liquors, and every thing except their clothing.

He had the whole party stripped and searched by his dirty Dutch sergeant and corporal, in a room filled with handcuffs and gyves, with an armed sentry at the door; and it is more than likely that if one of the prisoners, from a tight boot or other cause, had stamped heavily, the frightened Lieutenant would have ordered them to be shot.

On the night of their arrival, they, with a large number of other prisoners, were crowded into a room where most of them were made sick, and some were near dying. In the

morning the Judge and Mr. Powell, for permanent quarters, were placed in a small arched room, where the apex could be touched with the hand, and the rise of the arch was only three feet from the floor. In this cell or den were crammed twelve human beings, with their baggage, beds, cooking utensils, table, table-ware, chairs, water arrangements, etc., and it required much study and mechanical ingenuity to properly dispose of the bedding during the day, and the other furniture at night. There is not a murderer in one of our jails or penitentiaries who has not equal or better accommodations than these gentlemen had, who were imprisoned from mere political malice.

It is unnecessary to speak of the outrages they endured in this fort-damp, dirty, and disagreeable as it was, under the management of such a creature as commanded it in 1862.

On the first day of October, 1862, Mr. Powell was transferred to Fort Delaware, by orders from Washington; to which place he had been preceded, a few days, by Judge Carmichael. This was an amelioration of their condition, brought about by the influence of such friends as Hon. James A. Pearce and Hon. Reverdy Johnson, Senators of Maryland, William A. Spencer, Esq., and others, whose earnest endeavors were unequal to the task of releasing the citizens of their State, so illegally and wantonly imprisoned and abused, from the clutches of the tyrant who then controlled the Government.

Mr. Lincoln, to whom Judge Carmichael sent a copy of his charge to the grand jury, with a statement of the facts of his illegal arrest, expressed to Senator Pearce his conviction that these gentlemen ought to be discharged; but added, that Stanton would not consent to it; thus proving that that Jacobin ruled his weak master.

At Fort Delaware, it is due to Major Burton, then in command, to say that, he deported himself toward the prisoners as an officer and gentleman; and never descended from his position, in either capacity, to an act of meanness or oppres sion. They were allowed on parole the privilege of the entire grounds of the Fort for exercise and amusement, and