Major-General John A. Dix to Colonel Randolph B. Marcy, October 21, 1861

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA,

Baltimore, Md., October 21, 1861.

Col. R. B. MARCY, Inspector-General, Army of the Potomac:

COLONEL: It has occurred to me that it might be interesting to you to know the system adopted in Baltimore to secure the inhabitants from annoyance by the bad conduct of our soldiers and to keep our men within their encampments.

A few days after I took command, the latter part of July, some 300 of our men had escaped from their regiments, and were disgracing the service by their drunkenness and disorderly conduct in the city, where most of them were secreted. I immediately issued an order to the police to arrest all soldiers found in Baltimore without passes signed by the captains of the companies and the colonels of the regiments to which they belonged, and I adopted very stringent rules in regard to permits to soldiers to leave their camps. In about ten days the absentees were all hunted up in the streets and in their hiding places and brought back to their regiments. Since that time there has been no repetition of these disorderly scenes. All soldiers arrested in the city are taken to the exterior stations of the police, and guards are sent for them every morning and evening. During the month of September, of about 7,000 men in and around the city, only 140 were taken in custody by the police, and of this number 59 belonged to the Second Regiment Maryland Volunteers, which was recruited in Baltimore.

The city has never been so free from disorder, disturbance, and crime as it has been during the last sixty days, and during the whole time not a single soldier has been employed in aid of the police. Much is no doubt due to the presence of a military force, and it is due to the regiments under my command to say that the orderly conduct both of officers and men has produced an improved feeling among large numbers of citizens who have been exceedingly hostile to the Government. I may say this most emphatically of the Sixth Regiment Michigan Volunteers and the eighth ward, the most disloyal in the city, within which the regiment is stationed, at the McKim mansion.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN A. DIX,

Major-General, Commanding.

SOURCES: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 5 (Serial No. 5), p. 623-4; Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John Adams Dix, Volume 2, p. 33-4