Biography
James W. Wall was a New Jersey Democratic politician and newspaper editor arrested in September 1861 for his antiwar and anti-administration writings and held without charge at Fort Lafayette for about two weeks. He was later elected to the U.S. Senate from New Jersey in 1863.
Additional source for this Civil War detention: John A. Marshall, American Bastile (1869), printed pages 139-152, https://archive.org/details/americanbastile00marsgoog/page/n152/mode/2up. This is a partisan retrospective account; its judgments should be read as attributed claims.
The Fort Lafayette return records admission on September 11, 1861; this is a prison admission, not a separately verified physical arrest day. It records actual discharge on September 24, 1861. Source: Official Records, Series II, Volume II, printed page 229, https://archive.org/details/cu31924079570242/page/n244/mode/1up.
