Biography
Martin W. Barr, an Associated Press telegraph agent, was arrested at his Louisville, Kentucky home September 19, 1861 and confined at Fort Lafayette before transfer to Fort Warren. Authorities alleged that he used his telegraph position to assist Confederate interests. He declined conditional releases offered in December 1861 and January 1862, requesting exchange instead. The summary explicitly records that he remained imprisoned at Fort Warren February 15, 1862; none of the earlier release orders is treated as an actual discharge. The cited account records administrative wartime detention and supplies no criminal conviction. Source: Official Records, series II, volume II, section 1, printed page 806, https://archive.org/details/cu31924079570242/page/n821/mode/2up. His name also appears among the October 8, 1861 prisoner remonstrance signers reproduced in American Bastile (1869), printed pages 666-667, https://archive.org/details/americanbastile00marsgoog/page/n683/mode/2up.
Barr’s January letters describe his wish for an exchange and his refusal to accept earlier allegiance-oath terms; those offers were not actual discharges. His family correspondence describes financial hardship and lack of employment. The February 21,1862 order directed release on February 22 on a promise to render no aid or comfort to the enemy. Dimick’s March 17 execution report says Barr had taken his parole and left in accordance with that order. This establishes an actual discharge by March 17 following the February 22 instruction, but the report does not independently restate the precise departure day; no exact final release field is inferred here. Source: Official Records, Series II, Volume II, section 2, printed pages 809–810,824–828, https://archive.org/details/cu31924079570259/page/n29/mode/1up.
