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
