Biography
Marshall reproduces George D. Prentice's account naming Calhoun Benham, a former U.S. district attorney in California, among three men arrested aboard a steamer near the Isthmus in 1861 by General Sumner. The stated suspicion was that they intended to fight against the United States. Benham was confined at Fort Lafayette, paroled to Washington, and freed after Prentice's intervention with President Lincoln. The account gives no exact custody dates. Source: John A. Marshall, American Bastile (1869), printed pages 616-620, https://archive.org/details/americanbastile00marsgoog/page/n633/mode/1up.
The Fort Lafayette return records admission on November 18, 1861; this is a prison admission, not a separately verified physical arrest day. It records actual discharge on December 2, 1861. Source: Official Records, Series II, Volume II, printed page 229, https://archive.org/details/cu31924079570242/page/n244/mode/1up. The institution-specific admission recorded here does not establish the start of all custody in this case; a complete imprisonment total is therefore left unspecified.
The detailed chronology distinguishes shipboard arrest by Sumner, New York hotel parole, police station-house custody actually reported November 16–17, and later Fort Lafayette confinement. The November 30 release order was executed through a December 2 signed parole; all three reported at Washington December 5. Crucially, Seward’s December 10 memorandum expressly found no disloyal purpose in their journey and called the accusation that they carried and destroyed treasonable dispatches unfounded. The President directed that their duress end and they stand like citizens of unquestioned loyalty. Prentice and Benham separately recorded an oral presidential settlement December 7. These are final exoneration and end-of-restraint accounts, contradicting the opening summary’s assertion that parole remained in force February 15,1862. Captain Healey and ex-Senator Nesmith were only proposed additional arrests that Kennedy said he had not effected. Source: Official Records, Series II, Volume II, printed pages 1009–1020, https://archive.org/details/cu31924079570259/page/n210/mode/1up.
