Biography
Severn Teackle Wallis was a distinguished Baltimore lawyer and man of letters and a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. He was among the roughly thirty state legislators and officials seized in the September 1861 federal arrests meant to prevent a feared secession vote, and was imprisoned without charge at Fort McHenry and then Fort Warren for some fourteen months.
Additional source for this Civil War detention: John A. Marshall, American Bastile (1869), printed pages 369-370, https://archive.org/details/americanbastile00marsgoog/page/n384/mode/2up. This is a partisan retrospective account; its judgments should be read as attributed claims. The Fort Warren political-prisoner return dated April 15, 1862 records this individual’s commission disposition as: “Not examined.” The report date is not an exact release date. An offered parole, unaccepted order, or not-examined marker does not establish release or uninterrupted physical imprisonment through that day. Source: Official Records, Series II, Volume II, printed page 285, https://archive.org/details/cu31924079570242/page/n300/mode/1up.
