The Denton Arrests

On August 17, 1862, the steamboat Balloon arrived at Denton wharf and disembarked a company of New York infantry and a troop of cavalry. The soldiers quickly arrested twelve prominent local citizens and transported them to imprisonment at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Had the U.S. Army broken up a nest of traitors as implied by pro-Union newspapers, or was this an example of what states-rights poet James Ryder Randell described as the "despot's heel" in rural Maryland?

Clearly, pro-South adherents were active in Caroline County in 1862. William Gadd, one of the arrested men, was a paroled Confederate soldier. Another, G.W. Goldsborough, had obtained a commission in the Confederate army. A third man, William Holt, was reported to be "hurrahing for Jeff Davis" while a prisoner in Fort McHenry. On the other hand, most of the arrests were for political reasons. The prisoners included merchants, doctors, and attorneys who were prominent leaders of the Democratic Party as well as editor Albert Gullett and the owners of the Denton Journal. The Journal had not advocated secession but had harshly critized the U.S. Army for its suppression of the press and free speech and the imprisonment of dissenters.

In its desperation to keep Maryland in the Union and prevent Washington from being isolated in the Confederacy, the Lincoln administration sometimes overstepped Constitutional boundaries. As a later historian notes, even the most rural parts of Maryland were "where freedom was denied, for the sake of preserving freedom."

[text with picture on left] Ann Maria Evitss Cherbonnier, with son Joseph, watched as her husband, Dr. Peter Ovid Cherbonnier, was arrested in 1862 and taken by steamboat to a prison cell in Fort McHenry.

[text with middle image] Above is the "Register of Prisoners" from Fort McHenry describing three of the men arrested in Caroline County. It notes that prisoner Gadd "hurrahed for Jeff Davis and cursed [Md. Governor Hicks," then refused to take an Oath of Allegience.

[text with image on right] If the objective of the Caroline arrests was to intimidate other residents of the Eastern Shore, it was probably successful. All Eastern Shore newspapers ran news accounts, including the Cambridge Herald, above.

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Show me all markers in:  Denton, MD  |  Caroline County  |  21629  |  Maryland  |  United States of America

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